Part 8 (2/2)

”Right-o!” a.s.sented Dennis eagerly, and the car swung into a narrow track between two swelling rises that had not long before been peaceful farm land under cultivation.

It was little more than a cart track, and they plunged and swayed like a boat on a choppy sea, the wheels now mounting the bank at a dangerous angle in the uncertain light of the dawn.

”It's better going a bit farther ahead,” said the chauffeur. ”You sit tight, and I'll bring you through somehow.”

The words had scarcely left his lips when everything seemed to be suddenly swallowed up in a soul-terrifying roar. A vivid orange flame rose skyward, and as Dennis soared upward through the air and fell with a plump into a field of beetroot, the world turned black and he lost consciousness.

How long he lay he did not know, but when he opened his eyes it was almost light, and the face of his wristlet watch had been smashed to atoms.

For a few seconds he remained quite still, not daring to move from fear of what movement might tell him, but at last, sitting up, he felt himself all over and breathed a sigh of deep thankfulness to find that he had no bones broken.

He remembered that they had been running into an avenue where the trees met overhead and formed a species of tunnel, and the avenue was still there before him, one of the poplars headless like poor Captain Thompson, and showing a great white scar where the sh.e.l.l had caught it.

And then he rose to his feet, to find himself half a dozen yards from the narrow road, his heart standing still as he saw the mangled cha.s.sis of the motor, entirely stripped of its body works, reared up on one end at the edge of the crater.

The whole road seemed to have been scooped out to the depth of several feet, and how he had escaped destruction was little short of miraculous.

The skirt of his own tunic was rent to rags and ribbons, his Sam Browne belt, map-case, and gla.s.ses were gone, and the French general's message with them, and a great sob shook the lad as he walked slowly to the ruined car.

The first thing he saw was a human leg swathed to the knee in a stained puttee, and a stride farther on was the rest of his companion, so shockingly mutilated that it was only with an effort he could bring himself to examine it.

”Poor chap, poor chap!” he muttered. ”An end like this after eighteen months at the wheel!”

There was no trace of the captain's body; it was probably buried deep in the sh.e.l.l hole, or else plastered far and wide over the hillside with the debris of the motor.

He stooped and opened the chauffeur's coat, which bulged suggestively, and drew out a little case containing his identification papers and driver's licence, perhaps also letters from home.

Pulling himself together, he placed the case in one of his own breast pockets which had escaped injury, with a soldier's ”small book” he had picked up from one of the dead Saxons in their own trench as a memento to send home to his mother, and then he looked about him, without seeing sign or trace of living thing or human habitation.

There was a green wheatfield on his right hand, from which the mist was curling away, and in the glory of the dawn overhead the larks were trilling. A patch of scarlet poppies was almost startling in its vividness, and beyond the poppies a long ribbon of yellow mustard was backed by a thick wood.

”Where on earth am I?” was the thought that pa.s.sed through his brain.

”This poor chap said the road would bring us near to our firing line, and I may be able to borrow another motor-bike there. I must return to the French headquarters and get that message duplicated, or I'm not worth my salt.”

He straightened one of his leggings which had been twisted round, and, skirting the sh.e.l.l hole, started out on his voyage of discovery, feeling rather dizzy at first, but surprised to find that his cap was still upon his head, for he had not yet been served out with a trench helmet.

The narrow way wound along the edge of the wood through a hollow, the banks of which were clothed with purple scabious, and he had gone some distance before he thought of taking his bearings by the sun, which showed him that he was heading due south.

”I'm on the right road, anyhow,” he muttered, and then he suddenly stopped and crouched low.

In the mist wreath that still filled the hollow he had caught sight of a figure in uniform, which recalled the field grey of the Saxon. The man was standing motionless beside a clump of trees that tufted the skyline, and, uncertain whether he could gain the shelter of the wood behind him unseen, Dennis was looking backwards over his shoulder when the decision was taken very unexpectedly out of his hands by the appearance of another man, who suddenly covered him with a rifle from the bank top not a yard away, and challenged him in German.

”_Wer da!_” said the man, and although he recognised that his interrogator was wearing a French uniform, Dennis unthinkingly replied to the question in German also.

”I am an English officer,” he said. ”Perhaps you will be good enough to direct me to our nearest brigade.”

The man rose slowly from the wet wheat which had concealed his coming, and, still covering Dennis with his rifle, slid down the bank until he was within arm's length, a thick-set Alsatian corporal, powerful as a bull.

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