Frank flashed the light of the big torch for an instant. And at once the monoplane shot forward.
"See the point?" cried Greene. "They"ll aim at where the light was. Only we won"t be obliging enough to be there! Well, this is a good night"s work, my lad! You were right, and if I"m not much mistaken, you"ll get your name in dispatches for this. The beggars! I"d like to know how they got through without being spotted!"
All the time the monoplane was racing away. But suddenly there was a sharp crack behind them, and in an agony of concern Greene twisted around in his seat.
"Oh, Lord!" he groaned. "I crowed too soon! That"s the petrol tank--bullet hole! It"ll leak out, and we can"t stop the leak!"
"If you went down right away, would it all get out before you reached the ground?"
"No, but they"ll catch us if we go down here. Can"t do that."
"It"s the only chance!" said Frank. "Isn"t it?"
"You"re right. I"ll take it. Good boy! You don"t mind the risk?"
"No!" said Frank.
Then they were rushing down. It was a desperate venture. Greene pointed for a field, but in the darkness the risk of capture by the Germans was the least that they faced.
Greene had cut out his engine; there was too much danger of an explosion, with the leaking petrol, to allow the spark to continue. He had to volplane down this time, not as a quick way of descending, but as the only means of preventing a disastrous fall. Even in broad daylight there is always risk in landing with a dead motor. Here, in the darkness and with unknown country below, the risk was multiplied a hundred times.
All that Greene knew with any certainty was that he was over country broken up into fields. The fences were numerous, there were ditches, too, and obstructions of all sorts. The larger ones he could see readily enough, when he got close; it was the smaller ones that threatened the real danger.
But if the danger was great, Greene was a master of his craft. He swooped downward. Then, when he was scarcely a hundred feet up, he caught the machine with a fine show of skill and held it, for a moment, on an even keel.
"We"ll chance it in the next field," he called. "Can"t stay up any further. Here goes!"
Down, down, they went. Then they were down, b.u.mping along. But the element of luck that, despite all his skill, Greene had to have, favored him. The field was smooth and the monoplane came to rest safely. In an instant both were out, Greene first, since Frank, having to free himself from his straps, was delayed.
"Quick! The small flashlight!" called the flyer. "Here, give it to me!
If we"re to save any essence we"ve got to be quick!"
He took the light. But a quick look over the tank failed to show a spurting stream of gasoline.
"By Jove! Wonder if I could have been mistaken? Perhaps it was something else they hit!" cried Greene. But then he groaned. As he unscrewed the cap of the tank and peered in, he saw that it was bone dry.
CHAPTER XIII
A DANGEROUS ERRAND
For a moment Greene was speechless with despair. Fate had tricked him, it seemed, after he had done his best--and a better best than most men could even have attempted. Then he grinned.
"We"ll have to hoof it," he said. "A good twelve miles, too! If we were champions at cross-country work it would take us the best part of two hours. And it"s so long since I"ve used my legs that I don"t know how long I"ll be."
"There"s one chance," said Frank. "I remember that I saw a little inn on the road the Germans took this afternoon. We"re not so very far from that now. These little inns along the roads in France all have petrol for motorists who run short. If I went there I might get some."
Greene shook his head doubtfully.
"The government"s taken all the essence it could find," he said, "I don"t believe they"d have any. And, besides, there"s a good chance that the Germans have men there."
"Still it"s a chance," said Frank. "Won"t you let me try? If I can"t get it we shan"t lose much time. And if I do, look at the difference it would make."
"That"s true enough," said Greene. "All right, try it. I"ll mend up the hole, when I find it, and if you do get some essence, we can be off at once. Good luck!"
Frank was on his way already, slipping away in the direction whence they had come. Luckily enough, he got his bearings by the windmill from which he had observed the wood into which the Germans had gone. To make his way to the road along which he and Henri had first seen the Germans pa.s.sing was an easy matter. But he was afraid of roads by this time, and the more so because he knew that the Germans, having been aroused by the attack from the sky, would be doubly on the alert. So he stuck to the side of the road, religiously taking advantage of every bit of cover he could find to escape the foe.
"They knew they"d given themselves away just as soon as they fired at us," he reasoned, thinking half aloud as he trudged along, which was a habit of his. "And I don"t believe they know they hit us at all. They do know that they didn"t bring us down at once. Anyhow, there"s no reason for them to be secret any more, and if they stay in that wood, they"ll throw out pickets now, because they"ll think that as soon as we went back and made our report troops would be sent to rout them out. It"s up to me to be mighty careful."
That was good sound reasoning, too. From all he had learned since the war began, he knew that the Germans were by no means foes to be despised. They had been pretty generally victorious, but that was not all. They had shown a capacity for being always ready, for thinking of everything that might come up to block their plans. And he was sure, therefore, that the German commander would not argue that the aeroplane had got clean away just because the probabilities indicated that it had. He was almost certain to beat the country within a reasonable area for it, in the hope of finding it crippled and thus unable to carry the news it had come to get.
"I bet the Germans wouldn"t have sent just one aeroplane," he reflected.
"They"d have sent two, so that if anything happened to one, the other could have brought back the news."
But though he was thinking hard, he didn"t linger as he went. Soon he came to the transverse road along which the Germans had gone, and turned in the direction they had taken. It was beginning to rain a little now, and it was very dark. He still stuck to the fields, though he was close to the road, and he found nothing to bar his way to the inn. When he got there, moreover, he found the place dark and deserted. Not a soul was in sight, but there were evidences that spoke as eloquently as men or women could have done. In the tap room furniture was smashed and broken and shattered gla.s.s was about the floor. Plainly the Germans had stopped as they went by.
"Of course!" he said, to himself. "If there were people here they took them along with them. They wouldn"t be likely to leave any French people, whose first idea would be to tell what they had seen! It"s certainly lucky that they didn"t see us. We"d be with them now, I guess."
It was spooky work exploring the abandoned inn in the damp, dark night and with the knowledge that German soldiers were probably no great distance away. It was less than a quarter of a mile to the edge of the wood that had a.s.sumed such an important aspect, and he expected at any moment to hear the footsteps of intruders. None the less he went about his task quietly and coolly.
"If they had any essence, they"d hide it," he said to himself. "They"d know that both armies would need it for automobiles and aeroplanes, and they"d try to keep any they had left. So it won"t be in any of the usual places."
For that reason he did not even leave the main building to make a search in the stable that was used as a garage. Instead, he went into the cellar. Here it was still plainer that the Germans had pa.s.sed through.
His feet stepped into puddles of sticky dampness, and, using his flashlight, he saw that it was wine. The heads of casks had been knocked in; broken bottles, too, strewed the floor.
This, however, had not been wanton destruction, he was sure. It had an object, and that object had been to prevent the soldiers from getting anything to drink. Troops on an errand requiring such extraordinary secrecy as had been maintained in this case could not be allowed to drink any liquor. That would have spoiled in all likelihood the remarkable discipline of which Captain Greene had spoken.
But, once more, it was not his business to think of what he saw, or to speculate about it, but to find the petrol if any was to be found. And he stumbled upon the hidden store quite suddenly, and quite literally, too. In one corner of the cellar was what looked like a pile of kindling wood. Harry kicked it indifferently in pa.s.sing, and was almost thrown when his feet encountered a resistance more solid than he had any reason to expect. He looked down, and there, under the kindling, were two ten-gallon cans of petrol!
"I knew it must be there!" he cried to himself. He was down on his knees in a moment, shaking the cans to make sure that they were full. One had never been broached; the other was nearly half full. And this second can was the one he took. That would be more than enough to get the monoplane back to headquarters, and there was no reason for burdening himself with too great a load. He picked up the can, and at the same moment his heart leaped up into his throat, for overhead there came the sound of heavy footsteps. For a moment he stood as if paralyzed, listening.
The footsteps continued; guttural voices sounded,--the voices of Germans. It was impossible to distinguish what they were saying; and it made no difference, in any case. The only point that mattered was that they were there; that they blocked the only means Frank had of getting away with the precious petrol he had so luckily found.
He was safe enough personally. Even if they were led to come down into the cellar the chances were all in favor of his being able to conceal himself. What he feared was that some use was to be made of the place, and that the men whose voices he heard would stay there, thus preventing him from getting out of the building and so getting the petrol to Greene. It was more than possible, he thought, that the German commander, knowing that the presence of his troops in the woods had been discovered, would decide to use this place for headquarters.
And what he could hear confirmed this idea. There was a continual tramping overhead. Men came and went. That seemed to indicate that the occupation was to be permanent. He racked his brains for some means of escape. Windows there were none in the cellar. He found no trace of a trap door, such as there would have been in almost any American cellar.
And then the saving thought came to him like a flash. He debated for a moment, then decided that the risk was worth taking. First he took his can of gasoline to the steps. Then he poured a little into a broken bottle, and poured this, in turn, on the wood under which he had found the cans. He dragged the full can of petrol to the other side of the cellar. And then, very deliberately, he set a match to the gasoline soaked wood and retreated to the steps.
The fire he had started blazed up at once, owing to the petrol. And at once a thick, acrid smoke filled the place. He was well up on the stairs, and thus safe from being choked. But he was in danger should the Germans come down, though even so, since the steps were wide, there was a chance for him. But he did not expect them to come down. He thought the smoke would drive them out, since as nearly as he could judge his fire was directly under the room in which the most of the commotion upstairs was taking place.
It was not long before he heard coughing upstairs, the first sign that the smoke was doing its work. By that time a brisk fire was burning. It had run up the posts to the beams that formed the chief support of the room above, and to his delight Frank saw that these burned far more fiercely and quickly than he had hoped. Plainly the wood was old and dry.
Above, as the fire spread, louder cries succeeded the coughing. And then came the crucial test by which his daring experiment had to stand or fall. Some one opened the door at the head of the stairs. Now, if ever, he was to be discovered! But as the door was opened the smoke was drawn up, and the German who had come to it jumped back.
"The whole place is burning! Get out!" he cried, in German. "There may be explosive spirits still down there!"