For one wild instant Tom and Jack, as they admitted to one another afterward, felt an insane desire to attempt to break away from their captors, to rush at them, to attack if need be with their bare hands, and so invite death in its quickest form. They even hoped that they might escape this way rather than live to be taken behind the German lines.
It was not only the disgrace of being captured—which really was no disgrace considering the overwhelming numbers that attacked them—t it was the fear of what they might have to suffer as prisoners.
Tom and Jack, as well as the others, might well regard with horror the fate that lay before them. But to escape by even a desperate struggle was out of the question. They were surrounded by a ring of Germans, several files deep, and each was heavily armed. Then, too, their captors were fairly rushing them along over the uneven ground as though fearful of pursuit. The air service boys had no chance, nor did any of their comrades of the patrol who might be left alive. How many these were, Tom and Jack had no means of knowing. They did not see any of their comrades near them. There were only the Huns who were bubbling over with coarse joy in the delight of having captured two “American pigs,” as they brutally boasted.
Stumbling and half falling, Tom and Jack were dragged along. Now and then they could see, by means of the star shells, groups of men, some near and some farther off. There was firing all along the Hun and Allied lines, and as the boys were dragged along the big guns began to thunder. What had started as an ordinary night raid might end in a general engagement before it was finished.
There seemed to be fierce lighting going on between the several detached groups, and the air service boys did not doubt that some word of the dispersing and virtual defeat of the party they were with had reached their lines, resulting in the sending out of relief parties.
“This sure is tough luck!” murmured Jack to Tom, as they stumbled along in the midst of their captors.
“You said it! If our boys would only rush this bunch and get us away.”
“Silence, pigs!” cried a German officer, and with his sword he struck at Tom, slightly injuring the lad and causing a hot wave of fierce resentment.
“You wouldn't dare do that if I had my hands free, you dirty dog!” rasped out Tom in fairly good German, and he tugged to free his arms from the hold of a Hun soldier on either side.
The officer who had struck Tom seemed about to reply, for he surged through the ranks of his men over toward the captive, but a command from some one, evidently higher in authority halted him, and he marched on, muttering.
There was sharp fighting between the Hun sentries and small parties, and similar bodies from the American and Allied sides going on along the lines now, and both armies were sending up rockets and other illuminating devices.
The two Virginia lads felt themselves being hurried forward—or back, whichever way you choose to look at it—and whither they were being taken they did not know. The taunts of their captors had ceased, though the men were talking together in low voices, and suddenly, at something one of them said, Tom nudged Jack, beside whom he was walking.
“Did you hear that?” he asked in so low a voice that it was not heard by the Hun next him. Or if it was heard, no attention was paid to it, for Torn spoke in English. The tramp of the heavy boots of the Huns and the rattle of their arms and accoutrements made noise enough, perhaps, to cover the sound of his voice.
“Did I hear what?” asked Jack.
“What that chap said. It was something about one of the German prison camps having been burned by the prisoners, a lot of whom got away. The rest were transferred to a place not far from here. Listen!”
And the Americans listened to the extent of their ability.
Then it was they blessed their lucky stars that they understood enough of German to know what was being said, for it was then and there that they got a clew to the whereabouts of Harry Leroy, from whom they had heard not a word since the dropping of his glove by the German aviator. They did not even know whether or not their packages had reached their chum.
The talk of the Germans who had captured Tom and Jack was, indeed, concerning the burning of one of the prison camps. As the boys learned later, the prisoners, unable to stand the terrible treatment, had risen and set fire to the place. Many of them perished in the blaze and by the fire of German rifles. The others were transferred to a camp nearer the battle line as a punishment, it being argued, perhaps, that they might be killed by the fire of the guns of their own side.
“And there are some airmen, too, in the new prison camp,” said one of the Germans. “Our infantrymen claimed them as their meat, though our airmen brought them down. But there was no room for them in the prison camp with the other captured aviators, so The Butcher has them in his charge.”
Tom and Jack learned later that “The Butcher” was the title bestowed, even by his own men, on a certain brutal German colonel who had charge of this prison camp.
Then there came to Tom and Jack in the darkness a curious piece of information, dropped by casual talk of the Huns. One of them said to another:
“One of the transferred airmen tried to bribe me to-day.”
“To bribe you? How and for what?”
“He is an accursed American pig, and when he heard we were opposite some of them, he wanted me to throw a note from him over into the American lines. He said I would be well paid, and he offered me a piece of gold he had hidden in the sole of his shoe.”
“Did you take it?”
“The gold? Of course I did! But I tore up the note he gave me to toss into the American lines. First I looked at it, though. It was signed with a French name, though the prisoner claimed to be from the United States. It was the name Leroy which means, I have been told, the king. Ha! I have his gold, and the note is scattered over No Man's Land! But I will tell him I sent it into the trenches of his friends. He may have more notes and gold!” and the brute chuckled.
Tom and Jack, looked at one another in the darkness. Could it be possible that it was their friend Harry Leroy who was so near to them, since he had been transferred from a camp far behind the lines?
It seemed so. There were not many American airmen captured, and there could hardly be two of this same rather odd name.
“It must be Harry,” murmured Tom.
“I think so,” agreed Jack.
“Silence, American pigs!” commanded man officer.
He raised his sword to strike the lad. But just then occurred an interruption so tremendous that all thought of punishing prisoners who dared to speak was forgotten.
A big shell rose screaming and moaning from the Allied lines and landed not far from the party of Germans which was leading along Tom and Jack. It burst with a tremendous noise well inside the Hug defenses, and this was followed by a terrific explosion. As the boys learned later the shell had landed in the midst of a concealed battery—a stroke of luck, and not due to any good aiming on the part of the American gunner—and the supply of ammunition had gone up.
There was great commotion behind the German lines, and two or three of Tom's and Jack's captors were thrown down by the concussion. The air service boys themselves were stunned.
And then there suddenly sounded a ringing American cheer, while a voice, coming from a group of soldiers that confronted the German patrol, cried:
“Halt! Who's there? Are there any of Uncle Sam's boys?”
“Yes! Yes!” eagerly cried Tom and Jack. “Come on! We're captured by the Germans!”
There was another cheer, followed by a roar of rage, and then came a rush of feet. Gleaming bayonets glistened in the light of star shells and many guns, and the members of the German patrol, finding themselves surrounded, threw down their arms and cried:
“Kamerad!”
The fortunes of war had unexpectedly turned, and Tom and Jack had been rescued and saved by a party of Pershing's gallant boys.
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