Part 4 (2/2)

”We ought to be on it now,” murmured Dennis. ”It's a quarter of an hour since we left the listening post.” And he felt cautiously to the full extent of his arms, but without encountering an upright standard.

They did not know it, but they had pa.s.sed through a gap!

”Hold on!” whispered the Australian; ”I thought I heard something quite close on the left there.”

Dennis heard it, too, at the same moment. It was like the solemn rattle of earth falling into a newly made grave.

”It's only the chalk settling in those other crump-holes Baker warned us about,” he said, after they had listened breathlessly for a few moments.

”Our two fellows must have gone wide and struck them.”

But he was wrong. The crump-holes were on the left, far behind, if they had only known it; and it was from their right rear that a sudden m.u.f.fled exclamation came out of the stillness.

”'Evins!” said Tiddler, as he felt the sharp barbs of a low-stretched strand bury themselves in the slack of his pants. ”'Arry, I'm 'ung up!”

”Shut yer 'ead! What's the trouble?” growled his companion; and as Harry Hawke groped for his mate he shook the strand; the well-known jangle of an empty bully-beef tin warning them all that they had struck one of the simplest expedients of modern warfare, freely used by both sides.

A tin dangling on the barbed wire does not ring like a cracked bell unless somebody touches it; and from the darkness just in front and above their heads, Dan and Dennis heard a guttural whisper, and, realising that they were immediately under the enemy's parapet, lay as flat as playing cards.

”It's those two fellows of mine,” breathed Dennis in his cousin's ear.

”But how the d.i.c.kens have we pa.s.sed the wire without giving the alarm?”

Dan, with recollections of Anzac fresh upon him, remembered that slither of earth from those crump-holes on the left.

”I'll bet you anything there's a party gone out to your trench, and they've s.h.i.+fted a section of the wire to let them through,” he replied.

”We may meet them on the way back. Don't move! We know, anyhow, that their new wire's not fixed!”

Voices were humming above them now, and the German trench guards were evidently on the alert. Still nothing happened, and Dennis was just congratulating himself that their presence there was unsuspected when there was a sharp sound from the top of the sandbags, and a pistol light soared above their heads, illuminating the darkness.

For a moment everything was distinctly visible, although they themselves were so far hidden by the German sandbags; but as Dennis looked back over his shoulder, he saw the luckless Tiddler lying p.r.o.ne and helpless in the open, and the white face of Hawke telling out strong in the glare.

A hoa.r.s.e shout from the German trench went up as the pistol flare died down, showing that they had been seen.

”Give us a hand, matey; I ain't 'arf caught!” entreated Tiddler, who, resting princ.i.p.ally on his face and one knee, was making violent efforts to disengage himself.

”'Old still!” growled Hawke, producing his nippers and snapping the strand in two places, leaving a short piece about a foot in length embedded in the tough cloth. ”Now yer clear; back out of it.” And as he seized his rifle a green star-sh.e.l.l soared overhead, and there was an ear-splitting screech above them.

”That's high velocity,” whispered Dan Dunn, as they heard the splosh of a heavy sh.e.l.l in rear of the British parapet, followed by a deafening explosion and a red flame. ”We've drawn them this time, old man, but I can't make out why these beggars in the trench here don't fire. I'm for making a bolt for it before they start. What do you say?”

Dennis gathered his legs under him, and signalled with his arm to Hawke and Tiddler to go back, and expecting nothing but death for themselves, the two cousins suddenly jumped up under the very noses of the men lining the parapet behind them, and sprinted for the gap in the barbed wire.

One bullet sang by Dan's ear, and another spurted up the chalk dust a few feet ahead of Dennis, and as the vicious rat-tat of the machine-gun farther down the trench opened, they found themselves at the edge of a deep crump-hole, into which they rolled.

It was cover from the machine-gun, at any rate, but a cry of surprise broke from the young lieutenant's lips as he landed on something soft at the bottom of the hole, something which gripped him with a similar cry of surprise.

A sh.e.l.l-burst eighty yards away drowned the crack of Dan Dunn's revolver, and two out of the three Germans who had taken refuge in the same place rolled back and lay very still, just as another star-sh.e.l.l, a bright white one this time, broke above them and lit up the hole like day.

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