Chapter IX: Prisoners of War

Kneeling beside the road there, with heads close together, they laid their plans.

“There’ll be two of them,” said The Pickle, “and they’ll be armed. And we aren’t. I’d give a hundred dollars for an automatic right now, but never mind. What we’ve got to do is to get near enough to rush them before they can draw. That oughtn’t to be difficult, because they’ll be trying to fix the machine. We won’t try it yet, though. Let them alone for a few minutes. They’ll be suspicious and watchful at first because they’re probably not sure whether any one’s about. If nothing happens for a while they’ll conclude that they’re safe.”

“What did they land here for?” asked Pete in whispers.

“Had no choice, probably. Engine went wrong or something like that, I guess. They must have fallen behind the others and probably volplaned the first chance they got after sighting land. When they came down they smashed something. You heard it. Maybe a wing. Anyway, it will keep them longer. Now what about weapons?”

“What do you mean, weapons?” asked Pete. “I got mine with me, one on each arm.”

The Pickle and Dave smiled in the darkness. “All right,” agreed the former. “That suits me. It would be hard to find clubs or anything, anyway. My idea, fellows, is to go at them from three sides, but first of all we’ve got to locate them. If they’re in bushes we’ll have our troubles, for the pesky things’ll crackle.”

“Yes, and if the moon comes out again,” murmured Dave anxiously, “we’ll have more trouble.”

“I don’t think it will.” The Pickle was silent a moment, listening. Pete stirred uneasily.

“If we wait too long they may get away from us,” he objected.

“All right. Come on, then. We’d better lie flat when we get near them and crawl. Keep down now and don’t make a sound.”

Crouching, testing each step before they made it, the three crept back along the road, which was hardly more than a rutted path thereabouts. Gradually the voices of the airmen grew plainer in the stillness, although they never spoke loudly. Nor did they waste many words. With the voices came the sounds accompanying the unseen task, the soft, harsh rub of metal against metal and, once, the sharp ring of a tool. The plane had probably landed on the edge of the road, which might have been dimly discernible from above, and had “taxied” diagonally off onto the moor for a distance of twenty or thirty yards, its progress doubtless impeded by the low bushes.

Having reached a position on the road opposite the enemy, the boys paused. At that instant a tiny light stabbed the darkness across the intervening space and while it glowed the boys made out the position of the plane and saw the forms of two leather-clad men beside the nearer of the two outstretched wings. They appeared to be examining the damage sustained in landing and did much muttering as the little pocket flashlight was moved back and forth, shining through the varnished texture of the wing like a candle in a yellow Chinese lantern. The shadows of the airmen swayed black and monstrous across the ground. Then the light went out.

The boys, who had hugged the earth closely and with bated breath, now eased their positions and whispered softly again. Presently, had the two visitors from across the water been less absorbed in the task before them they might have heard faint sounds in the surrounding blackness not attributable to the breeze amongst the gorse. And then they might not have, for, after all, those sounds were loudest to those who caused them and might easily have gone unnoted by the airmen. Fortunately for the attackers the higher bushes were scattered and could be avoided, while the gorse was still green enough to bend beneath their weight without crackling. Ten breathless minutes passed slowly while the three boys, crawling like snakes, gained their positions. To Pete had fallen the most difficult task, that of circling the scene and approaching it from the farther side, and Dave and The Pickle were ready long before their illuminated watch dials told them that the time allowed for Pete’s detour was up.

Followed a few seconds of suspense.

Then from three different points of the compass came the patter of running feet, and the Germans snatched for their weapons and wheeled in alarm. Only their ears could aid them, for no eye could penetrate that darkness. To shoot at random would have been idle, and so, for just those few seconds that meant so much to the attackers the airmen hesitated, and that hesitation was their undoing. With more time after the first warning they might have fled safely into the darkness, but the attack was so sudden, so unexpected that there was no time for escape. It was only when an unseen form leaped upon him from the night that one of the Germans fired. There was a flash of orange light and the bullet went whistling past the assailant. Then the German’s head jerked back as a fist caught him on the point of the chin and that single flash of his revolver was multiplied a hundred times to his vision. He stumbled backward against the slanted wing of the airplane with a grunt, hung there an instant and slipped to the ground. And then Pete was on him.

A yard or more away the other German was giving a better account of himself, for, with Dave and The Pickle both engaging him, he was holding them off after a fashion. Dave was clinging to a hand that held a revolver and trying to get an arm around the German’s neck to pull him to earth, while The Pickle, fighting blindly, stumbling and tripping, was fearful of striking friend instead of foe. The German didn’t fight silently. He growled like an enraged dog, and the things he said would not look well if set down here in English. Being in German, they sounded horribly enough, but conveyed no meaning. Finally The Pickle found his bearings and, ducking under the flail-like blows of their antagonist, wrapped his arms about a heavy form, heaved, swayed, and then went crashing to the ground. Confusion reigned supreme for an instant, for the enemy and Dave and The Pickle were badly mixed up, but Dave managed to roll clear, the revolver at last in his possession, and The Pickle ended the struggle with a single blow against the temple of the man beneath him.

That brought a short, sharp engagement to a close. Two more or less unconscious Germans lay inert on the ground when Pete, having discovered the flashlight in a pocket of one of the two, illuminated the scene. A sailor’s yard-square neckerchief has many uses, and to-night three of them did excellent duty. With two they tied the hands of the captured Germans behind them and with the other trussed up one pair of feet. Two white handkerchiefs, knotted together, sufficed for the second pair. Then, out of breath, slightly bruised, but triumphant, they took stock of their victory.

They had, it appeared, captured a slightly damaged Albatross bombing airplane, eight small but wicked-looking bombs, certain maps and papers of uncertain value and two perfectly good lieutenants of the German Flying Corps. They were perfectly good by reason of the fact that one was quite unconscious and that both were securely tied. The one who was not unconscious was doing much groaning as the boys returned from their inspection of the plane, but was not yet articulate. Seating themselves on the edge of the wing, the boys faced their next problem, which was, briefly: What next?

It dawned on them then that being in possession of an enemy airplane and in charge of two prisoners of war several miles from the nearest settlement and with no notion in which direction that settlement lay was a trifle awkward. And it was not until they had discussed the problem for a good ten minutes that Dave remembered the maps taken from the prisoners. By the light of the invaluable flashlight they examined them and to their joy discovered one to be a very detailed map of the southeastern counties, showing not only roads, railways, streams and towns but even detached houses and footpaths! The comprehensiveness of it fairly staggered them. By finding the Gradford station and then the road they had traversed to the Wylies’ residence they were soon able to discover their present whereabouts and learn that by following a path along the shore they could reach the town of Alburnham in something under three-quarters of an hour, since the distance, after The Pickle had translated kilometers into miles, appeared to be just under three of the latter. And with the flashlight to aid there seemed no reason why the adventure should not be comfortably terminated in a couple of hours. It would not do for all three to make the trip to the village, and one would serve as well as two, and so very gravely they each produced a coin and, shaking it in a closed hand, slapped it down on a knee.

“Odd man goes,” said The Pickle. “Heads!”

“Heads!” echoed Pete.

“Tails!” said Dave. “Give me that torch.”

Not quite two hours later Pete and The Pickle, drowsing at their post, were aroused to full wakefulness by the chugging of a motor-car coming up the hill and the dull gleam of its lamps. Then, from the darkness emerged military and civil authority and Dave Garson, the former very wide-awake and agog with curiosity and the latter yawning and dull of eye. The prisoners were placed in the car, the rest followed, there were many stern questions in English and helpless responses in German, and the motor shot off down the hill, bumping and swaying over the rutted road and――every last one of the heroes went to sleep.

Later the car stopped and all got out in the half-gloom of a village street. The prisoners disappeared through a doorway and a light appeared at a window. Then some one took Dave by the arm and impelled him through a second doorway. Pete and The Pickle stumbled sleepily behind. There was a dimly-lighted room with cots. Some of the cots were empty. A fussy little corporal in his shirt-sleeves kept talking and talking, and The Pickle, trying to unfold a gray blanket, got ensnarled in it and tumbled over a cot and rolled to the floor beyond. And Dave couldn’t untie one shoe-lacing and so gave it up. Some one said “Good night, Yank!” Dave had every intention of answering, but the words got mixed up and his tongue wouldn’t work.

A stout major interrupted them at breakfast the next morning and they had to tell their story from beginning to end while their tea grew cold. The major told them to go on with their breakfasts, but how could they when he kept booming questions at them? Afterward two photographers enticed them out into the early morning sunlight and posed them against the gray stone wall of a barracks and took pictures of them. There was much praise for the boys, and the major in command presented them each with a souvenir of the adventure, Dave and The Pickle drawing the revolvers and Pete the pocket flashlight. At nine they were rolled off to a railway station in a motor ambulance driven by a young woman in khaki uniform, who got them to write their names in a little book she kept under the leather cushion of the seat. She explained that she tried to get the autographs of all distinguished persons she met, and was proudly exhibiting the signature of Lloyd George when the train came in and they had to hurry off. Pete spent much of his time during the first part of the journey in talking about that ambulance driver.

“When the war’s over I’m goin’ back there,” he said dreamily. “She was some kid, take it from Pete.”