Chapter XIV: A Wonderful Rescue

"BLAMED if I oughtn't to be treated for the simples."

Schneider was, indeed, a dejected figure at the foot of the long ladder in this inky well, the only point of light being a porthole sort of window, set high in one of the four stone walls.

"We're all of the same name as chumps," echoed Billy.

The situation certainly had serious aspect to the prisoners. While they had considerable confidence in the trailing ability of Roque, here was a case with about every chance in the world against successful tracing.

An isolated farmhouse, far from the beaten track, not even in present line of military operations, and confinement practically in a granite tomb, from which no wail of distress could possibly be heard outside.

What fate the Cossacks had fixed for them was merely a matter of dreadful surmise.

"Slow starvation," was Henri's unhappy guess.

"Penned up in this den until we go mad," was the blood-chilling view of Schneider.

"Say, you fellows give me the creeps."

Billy wanted his troubles one at a time.

The next one was all too near.

While feeling his way around the rocky walls, Schneider settled in his tracks as though he had been shot.

"Don't you hear water splashing?" For confirmation he stared blankly at the boys who had not as yet strayed away from the ladder.

"Are you starting your madhouse already?" demanded Billy.

"But there is water running near," insisted Schneider. "Come over here, if you don't believe it."

As if to humor their friend, the boys joined him.

Sure enough, the lapping sound was plainly audible at this point.

Further ahead in the dim recesses of the cellar the sound was of dripping, a steady patter like rain.

"Maybe they have pulled a sluice between here and the river," suggested Henri.

"The fiends," muttered Schneider.

"Gee!" exclaimed Billy, starting back from a forward step or two, "the floor is filling!"

Stealing along, inch by inch, the water spread throughout the cellar.

The prisoners retreated to the foot of the ladder and sought perches on the rungs. In case of full flood they could stave off drowning for a time by climbing higher. It was the only way.

"It's a pretty tight place we're in, old man, but not for the first time, and, mind you, we have always pulled out somehow."

Billy was ever ready to pass a cheering word to his chum when cheering words were most needed.

Schneider's nerve was again in the ascendant, he having sufficiently abused his lack of horse sense in being so easily led into such a trap.

"If I had hold of a good steel pike for a bit of an hour, there is nothing like a few planks that would keep us down here."

"Yes, or a couple of axes, or a stick of dynamite, or an electric torch, and so forth," bantered Billy.

While Schneider and Billy were word sparring to keep up their spirits, Henri noticed that the water on the cellar floor had pooled in the sunken spots, indicating that the pressure from without, for the time being, had largely subsided.

"No need for life belts yet," he cried, "the river isn't going to come through."

"And, thanks to that blessed streak of light," Billy pointing to the bull's-eye window, "we're able to see that you are right. So much for a starter."

"We'll beat you yet."

Schneider shook his fist at some invisible foe on the other side of the ceiling.

When, however, the first flush of encouragement at the fading of the flood had dimmed, it seemed a small matter about which to rejoice. The situation appeared as hopeless as before to the imprisoned aviators. With the coming of night the one diamond in the sable setting vanished--no ray of light to slightly relieve a condition now of absolute blindness.

"Oh, for one more glorious chance to meet those dastards in the open," groaned Schneider, who again was overwhelmed with keen regret that he had surrendered at all in the first place. But then he had no idea of such a dungeon as this, and, too, he had feared to provoke instant death for his young comrades.

In the coming dismal hours the troubled trio, deserting their ladder perches, stretched their aching bones upon the slimy floor, and passed the night in uneasy slumber.

Henri was the first to awaken, and as a morning exercise essayed to reach the little window by working hand and toe as a means of scaling the rough surface of the wall. As he clung for a fleeting moment to a protruding stone his chief discovery through the aperture was that outside it was raining in torrents.

Perhaps not much satisfaction in return for sadly torn fingernails and considerable waste of already waning energy, yet it was some assurance that they were not intended victims of a drowning plot of man's conception.

"It's not the river that is feeding this drip," announced the climber to his companions in misery, "it's raining like fury and the water coming in here is the gutter fall through these rocks."

"A bally lot of moisture," growled Schneider, splashing ankle-deep across the cellar to inspect a swinging shelf which had just caught his eye.

He reached up, and presently turned, holding at arm's length a mouldy sailcloth bag.

"Hidden treasure," whooped Billy. "Bring it nearer the light, Schneider."

The treasure proved to be meal of some sort in a fair state of preservation. A tasting test demonstrated that here was something that would at least dull the gnawing pains of hunger, when mixed with water, of which latter there was more than a plenty.

"We might make a fire out of the shelf," suggested Henri, "and turn this stuff into hot cakes. I've got a few matches in my pocket."

"I see a picture of the fire you could make down here," exclaimed Billy. "But what's the matter with trying it out on the trap door? Burn our way out."

The speaker had taken on an air of excitement at the prospect.

Alas! The matches in Henri's possession had been carried on his sleeping side, the side all night in contact with the slimy floor. There was not a strike in one of them.

Schneider, inveterate smoker that he was, remembered that his pipe, tobacco and match-case were all in the pocket of his great coat, of which the Cossacks had divested him after capture.

So in silence the unfortunate three mouthed the soaked meal, bitterly disappointed that they could not realize upon Billy's brilliant idea.

From bad to worse, they did realize, and soon, upon a much less desirable development. The rain had no stop this time to reduce the water flow into the cellar. In restoring the meal sack to the shelf for safekeeping, Schneider's long boots were wetted to the knees, and there was nothing to do but mount the ladder, and stay there.

To save a fall when napping, the prisoners lengthened their belts and buckled themselves each to a rung above the one upon which he sat.

"While you were wishing awhile ago, Schneider, why didn't you wish for a boat?"

"You'd joke on the way to the scaffold, young man," said the subdued firebrand, fixing a reproachful look on Billy.

"Never say die," retorted the irrepressible youth.

Another wearing night, and in Schneider's next trip for the meal bag his hip boots were none too long in the matter of preventing his taking on a cargo of water.

But this third day of desperate contemplation was destined to be marked by an incident which resulted in the lifting of the weight of gloom--and the herald of light and liberation from an apparently hopeless imprisonment was four-footed.

A few lines now in backward trend, to tell about the ambulance dogs, as many as a thousand, renowned for their excellent service for the Germans in both the eastern and western theaters of war. Each of the sanitary companies has attached to it four of these dogs, the German shepherd breed, marvelously trained and fitted for work on the battlefield, commanding everywhere eloquent tribute for their remarkable performances in finding the wounded and their acute scent on any trail.

Stanislaws had long completed his packing of the biplanes, and many a time and oft had impatiently paced Commissary Square, as many times going to the military road upon which he had last seen his aviation comrades riding joyously away. "'Stanny' was in a stew," as Billy would have put it, and he was not averse to letting anyone about him know it.

When night came word was passed from patrol to patrol, and back again, and no definite report of the missing aviators.

An observer was secured from among the young officers in the camp, and Stanislaws himself piloted one of the biplanes on the return journey to the fortress.

Roque was immediately advised of the mysterious disappearance of his three followers, and promptly indulged in some very emphatic comments not appropriate for parlor use.

"You must fly again in an hour," he raged, "and I'll be with you."

Stanislaws, though weary and nerve-strained through the exertions of the long flight just concluded and by the weight of anxiety, would not listen to the offer of brother aviators to relieve him of the added exertion of repeating such a journey without rest.

"I'm going back with him," he stoutly maintained--and he did.

At headquarters Roque took advantage of the first glimpse of daylight to institute work of inquiry, in which practice he was conceded to be without equal. But to no avail. The furthest outpost had seen the riders pass, and, fully satisfied with their credentials, had paid no further attention to their movements.

Somewhere out on the boundless plain, alive or dead, were the three so earnestly and expertly sought for.

"It's a hard nut to crack," Roque stated to a group of officers, "but I have opened just such hulls before, and I am not ready yet to plead inefficiency."

"Perhaps they have fallen into the hands of the enemy," said one of the officers.

"I can hardly believe that an old campaigner like Schneider would run into the lines of the foe with his eyes open. If suddenly attacked by lurking prowlers, I'll warrant we'll find some sign, for I know the man too well to believe he would be taken without a struggle and somebody biting the dust."

Roque had evidently not figured on Schneider's present handicap in the shape of the boys, forcing discretion ahead of valor.

Then the winning thought flashed into the mind of the secret agent--put the ambulance dogs on the trail!

The reminder was the approach of one of the sanitary officers. The latter, when he was told of the situation, at first presented a doubtful front.

"The heavy rains out there," said he, indicating the plain by a sweeping movement, "have drowned the scent, even if we had a good lead from this point; but," he concluded, noting the disappointment in the face of Roque, "I do not mind making a try for it. Here, Blitz."

The splendid animal bounded to the side of his master, lifting expressive eyes, and indulging in a series of short barks, showing readiness to serve in the best dog language.

Hasten, dog, there is sore need for aid in a dark place of yonder sea of mud!

Schneider, Billy and Henri had not ventured from the ladder since the early move after the meal-bag, which the first named had decided to keep within reach, and save further wading to the shelf. The flood on the floor showed no sign of receding--indeed, the trio had twice been compelled within the hour to climb a little higher to escape the splash at their feet.

Schneider, anything for diversion, pounded on the trapdoor until his knuckles were a bleeding mass, shouting until he was hoarse.

"What's the use?" he dully questioned, settling again into an attitude of sullen indifference.

The boys set up a duet, but with discord so apparent, even to themselves, that they quit the singing attempt as a matter of self-defense.

This noise had hardly ceased, when Schneider poked his head around the ladder support on the side of the light, with a hand hollowed behind his ear.

"Jumping jingo; listen!"

They all heard at once the snuffing of a dog, and with the sight of its black head stuck into the bull's-eye window, Billy dropped into the flood, breast deep, and struck out for the wall, up which he swarmed, regardless of scrape or strain.

He had seen the ambulance dogs in camp, and knew of the breed and their doings. Holding onto the narrow ledge like grim death with one hand, he used the other and his teeth in tearing out the scarlet lining from his cap, which he twisted around the dog's collar band. Blitz--for Blitz it was--whined his receipt for the red token, backed from the aperture, and padded away like the wind.

Two hours later the trap was lifted, and the exhausted survivors of this desperate adventure were hauled into daylight, joyfully greeted by a goodly company, including Roque. Stanislaws, sanitary officers, pioneers, and last, but not least, Blitz, tugging at the line by which he led the rescue party to the scene of his original discovery.