Kitabı oku: «The Ocean Wireless Boys on War Swept Seas», sayfa 9

CHAPTER XXXI
COURT-MARTIALED

Poor Jack, with feelings that may be imagined, was roughly thrust into a smoke house and the door slammed. Outside the sentries paced up and down ceaselessly, showing him that to think of escaping would be useless. There he must stay at the mercy of Radwig till his fate was decided.

No wonder, as he sank on a rough stool, he felt for a moment sick and apprehensive. The glitter in Radwig’s eyes when he saw who it was he had made prisoner had warned Jack to expect severe treatment. The hours dragged by and no one came near him. It was pitch dark in the smoke house, which, of course, had no openings and hardly any ventilation.

The clank of the sentries’ sabres, and their steady, monotonous tread, were the only sounds that disturbed the stillness except for an occasional, far-off rumble of cannonading. Evidently the main tide of the battle had rolled back from the scene of the morning’s engagement. If it had not been for the presence of the sentries, which showed that he was not forgotten, Jack would have been inclined to think that his captors had ridden on and left him.

But the steady tramp-tramp outside precluded all possibility of this. At last the door was flung open, and the two men guarding him entered the dark smoke house. Jack saw then that it was late twilight, but a cloudy sunset, threatening a coming storm, made it appear later.

“Come,” ordered one of the impassive, gray-uniformed Germans, who seemingly possessed a knowledge of a little English.

There was no resource but to obey. Jack, with a beating heart, fell in between his two guardians.

“I’ve got to be cool and keep my head,” he told himself as he was marched toward the house. “Any false step now might be fatal.”

Within the farmhouse, kitchen lights had been kindled. Two yellow flaring lamps showed the group of officers about the table with their swords laid among the remains of a meal. Wine spilled on the cloth and empty glasses showed that the farmhouse cellar had been raided for their entertainment.

At the head of the table sat the hawk-nosed colonel. Next him was Radwig. One of the officers, a major, was tilted back in his chair snoring noisily. Jack’s heart sank. He saw no signs of a fair trial.

“You have heard yourself accused of being a spy,” began the colonel harshly. “What have you to say to the charge?”

“Simply that it’s ridiculous. If you will give me time my friends will be back here with ample proof that I am an American citizen, a wireless operator and – ”

“Ah, ha!” exclaimed the colonel, placing one finger to the side of his hawk-like beak and looking cunning. “So that is it. A wireless operator with Belgian passes in his possession. It looks bad.”

Radwig bent over and whispered something in the colonel’s ear.

“Herr Radwig tells me that you are a hater of Germans. That you had him placed in custody in England and that he only escaped to join our army after surmounting great difficulties. What have you to say to that?”

“As to being a hater of Germans, no American is that,” said Jack. “We are all neutral in this struggle. So far as Herr Radwig being imprisoned in England, he was already in irons on the ship before she docked.”

“Is that true?” demanded the colonel of Radwig, who smiled and waved his hand with a gesture that signified “absurd.”

“You see Herr Radwig denies that you tell the truth,” remarked the colonel.

“Surely my word is as good as his,” protested Jack, trying to keep cool, although he saw that things looked black indeed for him before such a prejudiced tribunal.

“Herr Radwig is a German we all know and honor,” retorted the colonel. “Who you are we do not know. Therefore, between you, we must believe him.”

“You don’t mean that you believe I am a spy?” blurted out Jack.

“The evidence shows it,” rejoined the colonel coldly. “You are aware of the rules of war?”

The whole room suddenly swam before Jack’s eyes. A deadly chill passed through him. For an instant he could not assure himself that it was not a hideous dream from which he must soon awaken. But the next instant, the reality, the horrible fact that he was about to be sentenced to death as a spy, rushed back upon him. He tried to speak but his dry lips refused to deliver a word.

The colonel and Radwig whispered, and then the former announced in his harsh grating voice:

“It will be at reveille to-morrow. Remove the prisoner.”

“But you don’t understand,” he choked out, “surely you don’t mean to execute me, an American citizen, without a chance to explain. I – ”

“I will assume full responsibility,” was the cold reply.

Jack struggled with his captors, but a cruel blow in the small of the back with the butt of a rifle so dizzied him, that by the time he recovered his senses, he was back in the dark, foul-smelling smoke house once more.

CHAPTER XXXII
THE LONG NIGHT

Then followed the blackest hours of Jack’s life. Outside the sentries kept up their eternal pacing. In the distance a dog barked, and there was still scattered firing. For a long time the unfortunate young wireless man sat huddled on the floor of his prison in a sort of torpor.

All at once he recollected that one of his guards spoke English. Perhaps he could get the loan of pen or pencil and paper to write some last words. But when hammering at the door for some moments brought a response, his request was gruffly refused. The sentry resumed his measured pacing.

One – two! One – two! Hour after hour the sound beat into Jack’s brain till he thought his head would burst.

Then came another sound.

The sound of digging! The blows of a mattock!

A cold perspiration broke out on Jack’s forehead as he realized the import of this. They were digging his grave, and by a refinement of cruelty, within earshot of his prison place. Whether by accident or design, poor Jack was being forced to hearken to the most grisly of the preparations for the next morning’s reveille.

So the hours crept by leaden-footed. Sleep was out of the question as much as was possibility of escape. The sound of the digging, which Jack had stopped his ears to keep out, had ceased.

Then came a sudden stir outside. The sound of hurrying feet and commands barked in sharp, quick voices. Jack’s heart gave a bound.

Could it be a detachment of Belgians summoned by Tom and Bill coming to wipe out the small force occupying the farm?

He flung himself against the door of the smoke house, listening intently. There was a tiny crack at one of the posts and through this he could command a limited view of the moonlit farmyard. Then came an odd sound. Like the dry whirring of insects in the fall. It grew in volume. The hurrying and the shouts increased, too. Shots were heard, scattering one after the other and a yell that sounded like a shout of warning.

Then the world rocked and spurted flame. Screams and groans filled the air.

Again there came an explosion that shattered the night and sickened the senses. Jack, half stunned, fell to the floor of the smoke house as part of its roof was torn off.

Then came silence, broken an instant afterward by groans and moans and swift, alarmed orders. There was a rat-a-plan of hoofs. The queer whirring sound died out. Only the moans still continued. Dizzy and sick, Jack got to his feet.

As yet he could not quite realize what had happened. Suddenly followed realization.

A night raiding aircraft had spied the shifting lights of the encampment and, by the moonlight, caught the gleam of stacked arms, and had struck.

The sound of the sentries’ ceaseless pacing had stopped. Jack shouted and pounded on the door of the partially wrecked smoke house, but there was no answer but the moans and cries that were now getting fainter and less frequent. The sides of the smoke house were of rough logs and without much difficulty Jack clambered to the shattered roof.

He raised himself and clambering over, gave a hasty glance about him. It was a terrible scene of wreckage that he surveyed. In the earth two immense holes, big enough to bury two horses, had been torn, and close by lay two men. Over toward the house was a third figure stretched out. Three horses, one of which died as Jack was looking over the carnage, lay not far off.

There was nobody else in sight.

Jack clambered over the edge of the gap the shell had torn in the roof and dropped lightly to the ground.

“Wasser!” moaned one of the wounded men, whom Jack recognized as one of his guards. The boy sped to the well and hastened back with the big earthen pitcher from which they had refreshed themselves earlier that day.

But he was too late. Even as the boy held the cooling draught to the sentry’s lips, the man died. The other was already dead when the boy dropped to the ground, his body frightfully shattered by the aerial bomb.

There was still the third man lying by the house and Jack, thinking he might be able to minister to him, hurried over. But here, too, the bomb had struck fatally.

A shaft of moonlight fell through the poplars and illumined the man’s face. It was Radwig, struck down in death even as he had planned a cruel revenge for another. Jack covered the dead professor’s face with the man’s huge blue cloak and then stood silent for a moment. The rapidity with which it had all happened almost stunned him.

Fifteen minutes before he had been a prisoner with the hideous sounds of spade and mattock in his ears. Now he was, by nothing short of a miracle, free again. He raised his face to the sky and his lips moved silently. Then, with a last look about the place, he prepared to leave, fervently hoping that before another day had passed he would be with his friends once more in Louvain.

All at once he heard a loud whinny. One of the dead troopers’ horses had been left behind in the mad flight from the farmhouse. It was saddled and bridled, although the girth had been loosened. Jack untied it, tightened the girths, and mounted. He did not know much about riding, but somehow he managed to stick to the animal’s back as he directed it down the road.

Every now and then he drew rein and listened. He had no desire to encounter prowling bands of Uhlans or to run into the small force that had evacuated the farmhouse, no doubt believing him to be dead. But dawn broke while he was still traveling, not at all certain that he was going in the right direction.

Jack decided to abandon his mount. Taking off its bridle so that it could find forage along the roadside, he patted its neck and said:

“Thanks for the ride, old fellow.”

Then bareheaded, and tired almost to exhaustion by all he had gone through, yet driven on by dire necessity of reaching the Belgian lines, the lad struck off across a wheat field into a path of woodland. On the edge of the field he shrank suddenly back into the tall wheat. There lay a man’s coat, a stone jug and a basket. No doubt the man was close at hand. But although he crouched there for a long time, nobody came, nor was there any sound of human life. Birds twittered and once a rabbit cocked an inquisitive eye at the lad as he lay crouched in the wheat.

Cautiously Jack raised himself and parting the stalks, peered out. He saw something he had not noticed before. The man, who doubtless owned the belongings which had alarmed Jack, lay stretched out at the foot of a tree. He was on his face sleeping.

But was he sleeping?

An ugly, dark stain discolored the ground around him. His shirt was dyed crimson. Jack saw, with a shudder, that he had nothing to fear here. The poor peasant was dead. Shot down by wandering Uhlans no doubt, as he was about to gather his harvest.

“Poor fellow, he’ll never need these now,” said Jack, as driven by thirst and hunger he investigated the stone jug and the basket. One held cider, the other the man’s dinner of black bread, onions and coarse bacon.

Too famished to mind the idea of eating the dead man’s dinner, Jack stuffed his pockets, took a long pull of the cider jug and then plunged into the wood. Here he flung himself down to rest and eat. Then, tired as he was, he forced himself to rise and travel on again.

Faint and far off the distant rumble of cannonading came to his ears, but here in the woods it was as calm and peaceful as if war, death and slaughter were forgotten things. At length he came to a place where the woods thinned out and there was a small clearing. He was about to advance across this when he saw something that caused his heart to give a quick leap and stopped him short in his tracks.

At one side of the clearing was an aeroplane!

It was a big monoplane with gauzy, yellow wings and a body painted the color of the sky on a gray day, no doubt to make it invisible at any considerable height.

Any doubt that it was a war machine was removed by the sight of a small but wicked-looking rapid-fire gun that was mounted on its forward part.

Jack was still looking at it, rooted to the spot as if he had been a figure of stone, when there was a sudden crackle on the floor of the wood behind him.

Then came an order sharp and crisp.

“Arrette!”

Jack was not a French scholar but there was something in the way the command was given that made him stand without moving a muscle. Footsteps came behind him and then he felt rather than saw a man passing from the rear to face him.

He worked round to the front of the boy and then Jack saw that he was a small man with carefully waxed mustache in whose hand was a particularly serviceable-looking revolver, which he held unpleasantly level at Jack’s head.

CHAPTER XXXIII
THROUGH BULLET-RACKED AIR

The man with the revolver gave a sudden cry:

“Mon ami Read-ee!”

“Great Scott, de Garros!” gasped Jack, recognizing the French aviator. “What are you doing here?”

“I might ask zee same question of you,” smiled the other. “I leave you on zee sheep and now, voila! I find you in a Belgian wood wizout zee hat, wiz your face scratched by zee bramble and looking – pardon me, please, – like zee tramp.”

“I guess I do,” laughed Jack, in his relief at finding that instead of falling again into the enemy’s hands, he had met an old friend; “but I’m lucky that there’s nobody to say ‘how natural he looks’ – ”

“Pardon, I don’t understand,” said de Garros in a puzzled tone.

Jack plunged into a recital of his adventures, interrupted frequently by a hail of “Sacres,” “Nom d’un noms,” and “Chiens,” from the Frenchman.

“And now it’s up to you to explain how I find you here in the heart of a Belgian wood with a war machine,” said Jack as he concluded.

“Zat is eezee to explain,” said the Frenchman. “After you leave me in New York I get passage on a French liner for Havre. We arrive and I am at once placed in command of zee air forces of Belgium. Since zat time, pardon my conceit, monsieur, I think zat wizout bragging I can say I ’ave cause zee Germans very much trouble. Last night I fly over zee country and where I see Germans I drop a little souvenir, – but what is zee matter, monsieur, you look excited.”

“No, no, go on,” said Jack; “I was just thinking that it’s possible the day of miracles has come back.”

De Garros stared at him but went on:

“In zee course of my journey I see a farmhouse where Gerrman cavalry horses and stacked arms show in zee moonlight,” said the Frenchman.

“How did you know they were Germans?” asked Jack.

“Did you not know all zis territory is now overrun by zem? Yesterday they advance. They are now near Louvain. But nevaire fear, someway we drive zem back. But to continue. I drop one, two bomb wiz my compliments and – ”

“Saved my life!” exploded Jack.

De Garros looked concerned.

“Once more pardon, my dear Readee, but you are well in zee head? Zee sun – ?”

“No, no, don’t you see?” cried Jack; “those were your bombs that resulted in my being saved from a spy’s death.”

“Sacre! Ees zat possible? And yet it must ’ave been so! Embrace me, my dear Readee, nuzzing I ’ave done ’ave give me so much plaisair as zees.”

Jack had to submit to being hugged by the enthusiastic little aviator to whom, as may be expected, he felt the deepest gratitude.

“And now what are zee plan?” asked de Garros, when his enthusiasm had subsided.

“I want to join my friends in Louvain,” said Jack.

“Nom d’un chien! You are trying to walk zere through zees part of zee country!”

“Why, yes. I – ”

“Mon ami, you might as well commit zee suicide. It is swarm wiz German. I hide in zees wood till night when I can travel wizout having zee bullet swarm like zee bee round what you call zee bonnet.”

“Then what am I going to do?” he demanded. “I can’t stay here and I’ve had one experience with the Germans, and I assure you it was quite sufficient to last me for a lifetime.”

“I ’ave zee plan,” said de Garros.

“Yes.”

“My aeroplane hold three people.”

“Go on.”

“You shall fly wiz me.”

“To Louvain?”

“If that is possible. If not, to some place where you can communicate wiz your friend. ’Ow you like zat?”

Jack hesitated a moment. He was not a timid lad, nor did he fear ordinary danger. Yet flying above the German troops, between the place where they were talking and Louvain, was a risky business to say the least of it.

Yet there was no alternative that he could perceive. The mere idea of getting captured by Uhlans again gave him goose flesh. As if he read his thoughts de Garros said:

“You run no more of zee reesk in zee flight than you do on zee ground. Not so much. At night I fly high and I promise you I will not make any attacks.”

“You’re on,” said Jack, extending his hand.

CHAPTER XXXIV
A FLIGHT OF TERROR

“Take zees. You need zem. We fly fast. Très vite.”

De Garros was speaking as he handed Jack a pair of goggles. It was dusk and they, having finished an excellent meal from the aviator’s provision pannier, were about to start on their flight across the war-smitten country.

Already the flying man, aided to the best of Jack’s ability, had gone over the aircraft, testing every part of it. Everything was in perfect order, from the big Gnome eight-cylindered, self-contained motor, mounted with the big propeller forward, to the last bolt on the dragonfly tail.

Just before full darkness fell, which might have involved them in an accident in rising, de Garros gave the word to get on board. They clambered aboard, Jack with a heart that beat and nerves that throbbed rather more than was comfortable.

There are few people who do not feel a trifle “queer” before their first flight above the earth, and in Jack’s case the conditions of danger were multiplied a hundred-fold, for before they had cleared the woods and risen to a safe height they might be the target for German rifles and quick firers. De Garros wore a metal helmet padded inside. Jack had to be content with an old cap that happened to be in the aeroplane, left there by some machinist.

But, as de Garros said, the metal helmet would not be much protection against the projectile of a quick firer, or even a rifle.

The fighting aircraft was fitted with a self-starter, obviating the necessity of swinging the great propeller.

“All ready?” asked the Frenchman of Jack, who sat behind him, tandem wise, in the long, narrow body of the machine.

“Ready,” said Jack, in the steadiest voice just then at his command.

“Then up ve go.”

The self-starter purred, and then came the roar and a crackle of the exhausts as the propeller swung swiftly till it was a blur. Blue smoke from the castor-oil lubricant spouted, mingled with flame, into the thickening air of the evening. The wholesome smell of the wood was drowned in the reek of gasoline and oil fumes.

“Gracious, if there are any Germans within a mile, they’ll hear this racket,” thought Jack, with a gulp. “It sounds like a battery of gatling guns.”

De Garros took his foot from the brake lever and the machine darted forward. Jack clutched the sides desperately till his knuckles showed white through the skin. Then he gave a shout of alarm.

The machine had suddenly reared up like a startled horse. The jolting and bumping of the “take-off” stopped. The boy realized with a thrill that they were flying.

At that instant from the trees on one side of the clearing burst several Uhlans.

“Germans!” cried Jack.

“Maledictions!” exclaimed the Frenchman.

For a second or two the Uhlans stood paralyzed as the machine shot upward. They had heard the staccato rattle of the engine from where they lay camped, not far off in the same woods that had sheltered de Garros and Jack. Thinking it betokened a skirmish, they had hastily run toward the noise just in time to see the wasp-like machine whirr its way skyward.

But the machine was not well above the trees when they recovered from their surprise. Rifles were leveled.

“Look out!” cried Jack, “they are going to fire on us.”

“Hold tight now, I show you zee trick,” rejoined the flying man quietly.

The aeroplane was now above the wood which on that side was a mere belt of tall trees. Suddenly the machine ceased its upward flight. It rocketed downward like a stone. Above it bullets whistled harmlessly as the Uhlans fired at the place where it had been and was not.

The ground rushed up to meet them as the machine plummeted downward. Jack’s head swam dizzily.

“We’ll be killed sure!” he thought, but strangely enough, without much emotion, except a dull feeling that the end was at hand. Then just as disaster seemed inevitable, the machine suddenly began to soar again as Jack could have sworn it grazed the tall grass.

Up and up they shot, in a long series of circles, and then de Garros turned and grinned at Jack, showing his white teeth.

“’Ow you like?” he asked.

“I – I guess. I’ll tell you after a while” rejoined Jack, with suspended judgment.

The earth lay far below them now, although it was still light enough to see the fields marked off like the squares on a chess board and the countless fires of the Germans that dotted the landscape almost as far as could be seen. At every one of them were men, who, if any accident befell the machine and it had to descend, would make things very interesting for the air travelers.

Jack could not help thinking of this as the aeroplane flew steadily along, her motor buzzing with an even sound that told all was going well. But he knew they were not out of danger yet.

A hundred things might befall before they arrived safely in Louvain.