"It"s easy enough to talk of hiding, but where shall we hide?" asked Bart. "If we stay here above ground we"re bound to be spotted before long."
"Let"s make our way toward the town," suggested Frank. "There wasn"t a soul in sight there a few minutes ago. It seemed to be wholly deserted.
There must be plenty of hiding places in those heaps of stones, or perhaps we can stow ourselves away in a cellar. Let"s get a hustle on, too, or we"ll know sooner than we want to what a prison camp looks like."
As quickly as they dared they crept along, using every bit of cover that offered itself until they reached the outskirts of what had been the town. As Frank had said, it appeared to be wholly deserted at the moment. It was clear that all available forces had been summoned away to stem the great drive.
Having satisfied themselves that there was no one about they moved cautiously from one street to another seeking some place of refuge. The prospect was not hopeful, for there was scarcely a room in a single house that was not gaping wide open. Doors were gone and windows had vanished. There was hardly a place where anything as large as a cat could be free from detection.
"A mighty slim outlook," grumbled Tom, as they crouched close to a pile of masonry near the corner of a street.
"Stop grouching," counseled Frank. "We may stumble across something at any minute."
"Stumble is right," said Bart, as he rubbed a barked shin. "I"ve been doing nothing else since we got in among these rock piles."
"That house over the way there seems in a little better condition than the rest of these heaps," suggested Billy, pointing a little way down the street.
"We"ll try our luck there," said Frank, and again their cautious journey was resumed.
They reached the place and squeezed themselves in through a narrow opening on a side that had faced a tiny yard bordered by a wall about eight feet in height.
There had been three rooms on the ground floor of the house, but all three had been knocked into one by the visitation of sh.e.l.ls. The boys picked their way over the uneven ma.s.ses of plaster, and Frank gave an exclamation as he perceived an opening that seemed to lead down into a cellar.
"This way, fellows," he said as he looked down into the darkness. "I don"t see any stairs here but we can take a chance and drop. It doesn"t seem very deep. One of you hold this gun of mine and I"ll go first."
There was a chance of spraining an ankle if nothing worse, but luckily he landed safely.
"All serene," he called up in a low tone. "Hand me down your guns and then come along."
They did so, and the four found themselves in a cluttered cellar that by feeling around with their hands they found to be about thirty feet long by twenty in width. There was a furnace which had been broken into a pile of junk and a little light filtering down showed where a pipe had formerly gone through to the upper floor. There were a number of barrels in one corner, but apart from these the cellar seemed to hold nothing but rubbish.
"It"s as dark as Egypt down here," grumbled Tom.
"So much the better," replied Bart. "There"ll be that much less chance of a Heinie seeing us if he takes the trouble to look down here."
"So this is where we"ve got to hang out until our boys get here,"
remarked Billy, grinning. "It reminds me of the Waldorf-Astoria--it"s so different."
"Never mind," said Frank cheerfully, "it"s a thousand per cent. better than a Hun prison camp, and don"t you forget it!"
"You said a mouthful that time," replied the irrepressible Billy, with more force than elegance.
CHAPTER XV
THE FOUR-FOOTED ENEMY
"The first thing to do is to make a barricade of these barrels," said Frank, when the four privates had made an inventory of what the cellar afforded in the way of defense.
"They will help us in putting up a fight if the Huns discover us here,"
agreed Bart.
"Let"s see if there"s anything in them," suggested Billy.
"Swell chance," commented Tom. "They smell as if they"d had wine or beer in them, and you can trust the Heinies to have drained them to the last drop. Not that I want any of the stuff, but if they were full they"d stop a bullet better than if they were empty."
They tested the barrels by knocking against them with the b.u.t.ts of their rifles and the hollow sound they gave back proved that Tom had conjectured truly.
"Dry as the Desert of Sahara," p.r.o.nounced Frank.
"And that reminds me," said Bart. "What are we going to do for water to drink? We"ve got grub enough in our kits to last us a couple of days in a pinch. But we can"t hold out long without something to wash it down with."
"We won"t worry about that yet," said Frank. "I stepped into a puddle over in one corner while we were going round here. I suppose that came from the rain we had last night. It doesn"t fit my idea of what drinking water ought to be, but it"s a mighty sight better than dying of thirst."
They got out their stock of food and decided that with careful rationing they had enough for two days.
"And that will be plenty," prophesied Billy. "Our fellows will be here before long. Perhaps this very night we"ll be with the old bunch again."
"I wish I had your cheery disposition," growled Tom. "When any one hands you a lemon----"
"I make lemonade out of it," came back Billy, and there was a general laugh.
"That"s the way to talk," said Frank. "The Huns haven"t got us yet, and even this hole is better than a German prison camp."
"You bet!" responded Billy. "From all I hear those places are something fierce. A fellow had better die fighting than die of abuse or starvation."
"That"s what," agreed Bart. "And that"s another thing that shows how low the Huns have stooped in this war. Look at the way we treat them when we take them prisoners. They live on the fat of the land. Of course the Germans haven"t as much food in their country as we have, and we don"t expect so much for our men in the matter of grub, although even at that they don"t get enough to keep body and soul together. But it"s sickening to hear of the way they torture them. One of their favorite sports is to set dogs on "em. If a man doesn"t move quickly enough to suit "em they stick a bayonet into him. It"s low beastly tyranny that puts them on a level with the Turks. It"s no wonder that Germany is coming to be hated and despised by the whole world."
"Did you hear of the fire that happened in one of their camps?" queried Tom. "There was a hut in one corner of the camp with five men in it. It caught fire and the men, who couldn"t get out of the door because it was locked, tried to get out of the window. The sentry thrust his bayonet into the first man, and threw him back into the flames. The poor fellow made another attempt and again the sentry ran the bayonet into him. And every one of the five men burned to death, though every one of them could have been saved. What do you think of that, fellows? Isn"t it the limit?"
"They"ll get theirs," said Frank bitterly. "They can"t sow the wind without reaping the whirlwind. They"ll surely pay, soon or late, for every bit of this brutality.
"I hope it will be soon," said Billy. "I"m getting impatient."
"It won"t be long if we can keep up the pace we set this morning," said Bart. "Gee, how our tanks went through those wires as though they were rotten cord."
"And our guns are keeping it up," said Frank. "Just listen to that roar.
What a shame it is we can"t be out there doing our bit. It makes me feel like a slacker."
"It"s the fortune of war," said Billy philosophically. "But it"s might hard luck just the same that we took the wrong direction after we cleared up that machine gun nest so neatly. But let"s have a hack at that grub, fellows. Oh, boy, if we only had some of that stew we lost this morning!"
"That stew still sticks in Billy"s crop," laughed Frank.
"I only wish it did," mourned Billy. "But it never got that far."
"Well, just remember, fellows, that we"re on rations now," warned Frank as he doled out a little portion to each from the common stock they had pooled together. "We"ve got to make this last as long as we can. If we feel hungry when we get through we"ll just have to tighten our belts and let it go at that."
They ate sparingly, but, although they were all thirsty, especially after the heat and excitement of the fighting, it was a long time before they could bring themselves to drink from the pool in the corner of the cellar. They finally had to come to it, however, though they tried to make it less repugnant by filtering it through the only clean handkerchief they could muster among them.