With Haig on the Somme Part 17

"What on earth is going on?" thought the lad, and seeing that the shutters of the ground-floor room in which he had left his friend had been opened, and it being very nearly broad daylight, instead of entering the hall he sprang to the window and looked in.

Claude Laval, terribly weak from loss of blood, but with an odd, defiant smile on his face, was sitting upright in the carved chair, the sleeve of his wounded arm slit from shoulder to wrist, revealing the drenched blue-grey of his own French uniform beneath it. In front of him, his white moustache bristling with fury, and murder in every line of his wolf-like face, the old forester lifted a hatchet in both hands, while his wife, no longer the trembling servile old peasant of half an hour before, was tightening the knots of the rope she had thrown round Laval's body, binding him tightly to the chair!

In the little village three leagues from Bar-le-Duc a powerful car drew up in a cloud of dust in front of the restaurant where our friends had dined the night before, and General Joffre stepped from it on to the pavement.

"Ah, what? You do not know where he is? No one has seen him--the young English lieutenant who was to meet me here?" said the General, knitting his white eyebrows. "That is strange; but never mind"--and he drew out his watch--"it still wants four minutes to eight."

Leaning his elbow on the side of the automobile with one foot planted on the step, the great Frenchman waited, talking meanwhile with a Divisional General who had something to report.

"Yes, yes," said the Generalissimo, and then he looked at his watch again. The minute hand pointed to the hour, but Sir Douglas Haig's messenger had not come!

CHAPTER XIII

A Mad Gamble for Liberty

When Dennis Dashwood saw that terrible tableau through the window of Von Rudolfstein's hunting-lodge, his first thought was that he had arrived too late to save his friend; and, drawing his revolver from beneath Blumberger's flying coat, he raced for the front entrance.

"Scoundrel and pig! I will split your skull even as I ground that cross of yours beneath my heel!" Dennis heard the old man bellow. "I will be bound you know more about the destruction of that fine Zeppelin than you will admit. Come, have you not finished yet, thou clumsy old fool?"

"Clumsy old fool, indeed!" screamed the woman. "Who was it discovered that he was a Frenchman, I'd like to know? You will be taking the whole credit to yourself, worthless one!"

"No, I want some of the credit myself," said a stern young voice from the doorway. "Shame on you both to treat a wounded man thus!" And he fired at one of the huge hands that held the woodcutter's axe.

The formidable weapon fell with a clang on to the floor, and the forester gave a howl like a wounded beast.

"Quick, Gretchen, ring the alarm bell! They will hear it at the village!"

The old woman, who had sent up a piercing shriek, ran towards another door; but Dennis was too quick for her, and, putting out his foot, she pitched headlong on to the stone floor and lay quite still.

"Move your own length," he cried to the husband, laying his revolver by the side of the basin of hot water, "and I will shoot you like a dog!

Courage, Laval! All is ready, and I'll have you out of this in a brace of shakes."

"_Ma foi!_ you must forgive me, my dear friend," said the wounded officer. "When I heard the machine rise, I thought for a moment that you had deemed it wiser to save yourself."

"I'll tell you all about that afterwards," said Dennis grimly. "I'm going to save you now." And, cutting the cord, he threw the knife into the basin and proceeded to make a slip-knot. "We must make this old ruffian secure first."

"Look out!" exclaimed Laval. And Dennis raised his eyes just in time, for the cunning German had made a spring for the table, and already his unwounded hand had clutched the knife-handle. It was a huge thing, such as a butcher might use, and sharp as a razor.

"You _will_ have it, will you?" said Dennis grimly, and he shot the man through the heart. "It has saved me the trouble of binding him, and that makes the third Boche I have accounted for this morning. By Jove, old chap! you've got it pretty badly. Whatever happens, I must stop that bleeding."

The knife with which the woman had cut the sleeve of the leather jacket had revealed a terrible jagged wound in the Frenchman's shoulder, from which the blood welled through his fingers as he grasped it; but Dennis, tearing some linen that the woman had brought into strips, improvised a couple of tourniquets, utilising the spindles of a chair which he smashed to pieces for the purpose, and to his intense satisfaction he found the haemorrhage considerably reduced.

"Now, do you think you can walk?" he said anxiously. And Laval got up, reeling from the enormous quant.i.ty of blood he had lost.

"Half a mo!" said Dennis quickly. "This noose I had meant for Karl there will make a first-rate sling for that arm of yours. Another pull at the flask--that's good--and now we absolutely _must_ make a move."

"One moment!" exclaimed Laval, pointing across the room. "There is a French flag yonder. Will you do me the goodness to tear it from the wall and bring it with you? I cannot leave that trophy in the hands of these hogs. Besides, it may be useful to us later on."

Dennis ran across the room and lifted the silk tricolour from the hooks on which it hung, reading as he did so an inscription in faded gold letters on the shot-riven folds.

Von Rudolfstein's father had captured that colour in the war of 1870 at the head of his Cuira.s.siers, and it had hung there ever since.

"Look at all that remains of my beloved decoration!" murmured Laval, pointing to the floor.

"They shall give you another for last night's work," said Dennis.

Leaning on the boy's strong arm, the _pilote aviateur_ set out gamely, crossed the entrance hall, and had almost gained the rustic bridge when the clanging notes of a deep-tongued bell broke out behind them.

"The old vixen has soon come to her senses. Let us hope the village is not too near, for it will take us ten minutes at this rate," said Laval, squeezing the arm that supported him as his companion looked back.

He had heard it at the same moment--a hoa.r.s.e shout from many voices and the trample of hoofs at the hunting-lodge.

"By Jingo! Cavalry!" said the lad.

"You must leave me and run for it. Good luck, old fellow!" exclaimed Claude Laval. But Dennis gave an odd smile and stooped down.

"Put your arm round my neck!" he cried. "I'm not going without you, so argument is useless and will only waste time. It will give you a bit of a twisting, I know. Now, stick tight!" And he started to run with the wounded man on his shoulders.

Several times he nearly stumbled, for the ground was sandy, but he had accomplished two-thirds of the distance when the alarm bell stopped, and there was a chorus of savage shouts from the house they had left.

"Hold on like grim death!" panted Dennis. "We'll do it yet!" And bracing himself for the last few yards, he doubled the pace and reached the shadow of the aeroplane as the leading files of a troop of Uhlans thundered across the bridge.

A stifled cry broke from Laval's lips, though he tried hard to repress it, as Dennis dragged him up by main force and tumbled him into the observer's c.o.c.kpit.

"I know I've given the poor chap beans," he muttered to himself, as he handed him the captured tricolour. And, jumping down into the pilot's seat, he started the engines going for the second time that morning.

The officer at the head of the yelling hors.e.m.e.n was not thirty lengths away when the Aviatik began to move; and, roaring out an order to his men to draw their carbines, he emptied his own revolver at random.

Afterwards, when Dennis came to think calmly of that moment, he grew cold and s.h.i.+vered; but at the time itself his heart had given a mighty throb as the rubber-tyred wheels of the cha.s.sis left the ground, and they started on their long flight for home.

He knew perfectly well, as several bullets pierced the lifting planes and one starred on the stay he had tightened, that their troubles had by no means ceased when they left the Uhlans behind them. By that time keen eyes would be watching, not only the earth, but the sky, and he had only his wits to guide him.

There was the sun just rising to show him which was the east, and already far down below he saw the ribbon of the Rhine which they must cross; but sluing round to look back, he saw the thing he feared--an escadrille of German aircraft rising from the plain over which the smoke from the Zeppelin hangar still hung.

Already the enemy airmen were in pursuit!

Claude Laval had turned towards him at the same moment, and their eyes met. He had seen it too, but the blanched face of the wounded man shone with hope and confidence. His mouth opened, though the words were lost, but he made a gesture with his sound arm, and Dennis understood.

They were heavy clouds to which Laval had pointed, and Dennis steered straight for them, devouring the chart with his eyes.

Far down below and ahead of them in the extreme distance was the blue line of the Vosges, and he thought he could distinguish the Ballon d'Alsace, but of that he was not sure. His pursuers would naturally imagine that he would make for the nearest point of the French frontier, but that was not in his mind. If he had to deal with the fast-rising Fokkers, his only chance he knew was to gain the cloud-bank and keep within its protecting folds.