Transcriber’s Notes:

It was a muggy night in Dover—not an unusual thing in Dover—but nevertheless the wind had an extra whip in it and was lashing the outside Channel into a state of wild waves. An acetylene flare revealed several muffled figures flitting here and there on the harbor brink. There was a glint from polished surface, a flash-like, downward rush of a long, tapering hull, and a splash in the dark waters below. A sea-plane had been deftly launched. Motors hummed, a wide wake streamed away to the rear of the wonder craft, which, suddenly, as if by magic drawn upward from the tide, joined the winds that sported aloft.

Captain Leonidas Johnson, noted as an airman in the four quarters of the globe, sat tight behind the rudder wheel, and back in the band-box engine room was Josiah Freeman, one time of Boston, U. S. A.

Two aboard were not of the regular crew. Behind the wind-screen were Billy Barry and Henri Trouville, our Aviator Boys, bound for the coast of France, and bound to get there.

Ever higher and higher, the intrepid navigators sailed into a clearing atmosphere, where the clouds were being gathered into a moonlight bath. The 120’s were forcing a speed of something like a mile to the minute, and doing it at 2000 feet above the sea level.

Through Dover Straits the swift trend of the great mechanical bird was toward the North Sea, the blurring high lights of Dover fading in the distance rearward and Calais showing a glimmer on the distant right.

Captain Johnson switched on the ghost light to get his bearings from the facing dials, and speaking to the shadowy figures in the observation seat indulged in a bit of humor by asking:

“You young daredevils, how does this strike you?”

An answering high note from Billy:

“You’re doing bully, Captain, but mind your eye and don’t knock a hole in Dunkirk by flying too low.”

“Well, of all the nerve,” chuckled the veteran wheelman, “‘flying too low,’ and the sky almost close enough to touch.”

A pressure forward on the elevating lever shot the sea-plane downward, and the turn again to level keel was made a scant five hundred feet above the choppy surface of the Channel.

“We’ll take to boating again at Dunkirk,” observed the captain, but the observation was heard only by himself, for now the wind and the waves and the motors and the straining of the aircraft combined to drown even a voice like the captain’s.

There was destined to be no landing that night at Dunkirk. An offshore gale, not to be denied, suddenly swept the Channel with howling force. Rising, dipping, twisting, the sea-plane dashed on in uncertain course, and when at last it had outridden the storm, Ostend was in sight—the Atlantic City of the Belgians.

The stanch aircraft, with engines silenced, rocked now upon the heaving tide. Its tanks were empty. Not a drop of petrol in them. Retreat was impossible, and in the broad light of the new day there was no place of concealment.

While four shivering shapes shifted cramped positions and gratefully welcomed the warming sun-rays, they were under survey of powerful field-glasses in the hands of a gray-garbed sentry.

CHAPTER II.
A LOOK BACKWARD.

After following Billy and Henri in their perilous and thrilling night ride, it has occurred that they should have first been properly introduced and their mission in the great war zone duly explained. Only a few weeks preceding their first adventure, as described in the [initial chapter], they were giving flying exhibitions in Texas, U. S. A.

“That’s a pair for you!” proudly remarked Colonel McCready to a little group of soldiers and civilians intently looking skyward, marking the swift and graceful approach through the sunlit air of a wide-winged biplane, the very queen of the Flying Squadron.

With whirring motor stilled, the great bird for a moment hovered over the parade ground, then glided to the earth, ran for a short distance along the ground and stopped a few feet from the admiring circle.

“That’s a pair for you!” repeated Colonel McCready, as he reached for the shoulders of the youth whose master hand had set the planes for the exquisitely exact landing and gave a kindly nod to the young companion of the pilot.

“I’ll wager,” continued the colonel delightedly, “that it was a painless cutting of Texas air, this flight; too fast to stick anywhere. Fifty-five miles in sixty minutes, or better, I think, and just a couple of kids—size them up, gentlemen—Mr. William Thomas Barry and Mr. Henri Armond Trouville.”

Billy Barry adroitly climbed out of the little cockpit behind the rudder wheel and patiently submitted to the colonel’s hearty slaps on the back. Billy never suffered from nerves—he never had any nerves, only “nerve,” as his Uncle Jacob up in the land where the spruce comes from used to say. Billy’s uncle furnished the seasoned wood for aëroplane building, and Billy’s brother Joe was boss of the factory where the flyers are made. Billy knew the business from the ground up, and down, too, it might be added.

And let it be known that Henri Trouville is also a boy of some parts in the game of flying. He loved mechanics, trained right in the shops, and even aspired to radiotelegraphy, map making aloft, and other fine arts of the flying profession. Henri has nerves and also nerve. He weighs fifty pounds less than Billy, but could put the latter to his best scuffle in a wrestling match. Both of them hustled every waking minute—the only difference being that pay days meant more to Billy than they did to Henri.

No brothers were ever more firmly knit than they—this hardy knot of spruce from Maine, U. S. A., and this good young sprout from the lilies of France.

There’s a pair for you!

“Say, Colonel,” said Billy, with a fine attempt at salute, “if I didn’t know the timber in those paddles I wouldn’t have felt so gay when we hit the cross-currents back yonder. I——”

“Yes, yes,” laughed the colonel, “you are always ready to offer a trade argument when I want to show you off. Now you come out of your shell, Henri, and tell us what you think of the new engine.”

“There is sure some high power in that make, sir,” replied Henri. “Never stops, either, until you make it.”

“All you boys need,” broke in Major Packard, “is a polishing bit of instruction in military reconnaissance, and you would be a handy aid for the service.”

“While I am only factory broke, Major,” modestly asserted Billy, “Henri there can draw a pretty good map on the wing, if that counts for anything, and do the radio reporting as good as the next. What a fellow he is, too, with an engine; he can tell by the cough in three seconds just where the trouble is. If I was going into the scout business, believe me, I might be able to make a hit by dropping information slips through the card chute.”

The dark-eyed, slender Henri shook a finger at his talkative comrade.

“Spare me, old boy, if you please,” he pleaded. “Gentlemen,” turning to the others, who were watching the housing of the aëroplane, “this bluffer wouldn’t even speak to me when the altitude meter, a little while ago, registered 3,000 feet. Then he had a wheel in his hands; down here he has it in his head!”

“Bully for you, comrade,” cried Billy. “I couldn’t have come back that neatly if I tried. But then, you know, I have to work to live, and you only live to work.”

With this happy exchange the boys moved double quick in the direction of quarters and the mess table.

Colonel McCready, with the others proceeding to leisurely follow the eager food seekers, in his own peculiar style went on to say:

“There’s a couple of youngsters who have been riding a buckboard through some fifty miles of space, several thousand feet from nowhere, at a clip that would razzle-dazzle an eagle, and, by my soul, they act like they had just returned from a croquet tournament!”

Our Aviator Boys had grown fearless as air riders. They had learned just what to do in cases of emergency, in fact were trained to the hour in cross-country flying. Rare opportunity, however, was soon to present itself to give them a supreme test of courage and skill.

Little they reckoned, this June evening down by the Alamo, what the near future held in store for them.

CHAPTER III.
FAREWELL TO THE FACTORY.

An archduke had been killed on Servian soil, and war had raised its dreadful shadow over stricken Liège. The gray legions of the Kaiser were worrying the throat of France. From the far-off valley of the Meuse came a call of distress for Henri Trouville.

Billy Barry was very busy that day with the work of constructing hollow wooden beams and struts, and had just completed an inspection of a brand-new monoplane which the factory had sold to a rich young fellow who had taken a fancy to the flying sport. Coming out of the factory, he met his chum and flying partner. Henri did not wear his usual smile. With downcast head and his hands clasped behind him he was a picture of gloom.

“Hello, Henri, what’s hurting you?” was Billy’s anxious question.

“Billy boy,” Henri sadly replied, “it’s good night to you and the factory for me. I’m going home.”

“Say, Buddy,” cried Billy, holding up his arm as though to ward off a shock, “where did you get your fever? Must have been overwarm in your shop to-day.”

“It’s straight goods,” persisted Henri. “The world has fallen down on Trouville and I’ve got to go back and find what is under it.”

Billy with a sob in his voice: “Old pal, if it’s you—then it’s you and me for it. I don’t care whether it’s mahogany, ash, spruce, lance-wood, black walnut or hickory in the frame, we’ll ride it together.”

“Oh, Billy!” tearfully argued Henri; “it’s a flame into which you’d jump—and—and—it wouldn’t do at all. So, be a good fellow and say good-by right here and get it over.”

“You can’t shake me.” Billy was very positive in this. “We made ’em look up at Atlantic City. We can just as well cause an eye-strain at Ostend or any other old point over the water. The long way to Tipperary or the near watch on the Rhine—it’s all one to me. I’m going, going with you, Buddy. Here’s a hand on it!”

The boys passed together through the factory gate, looking neither to the right nor to the left, nor backward—on their way to great endeavor and to perils they knew not of.

Out to sea in a mighty Cunarder, the “flying kids,” as everybody aboard called them, chiefly interested themselves in the ship’s collection of maps. As they did not intend to become soldiers they were too shrewd to go hunting ’round war zone cities asking questions as to how to get to this place or that. They had no desire to be taken for spies.

“Right here, Billy,” said Henri, indicating with pencil point, “is where we would be to-night if I could borrow the wings of a gull.”

Billy, leaning over the map, remarked that a crow’s wings would suit him better, adding:

“For we would certainly have to do some tall dodging in that part of the country just now.”

“Do you know,” questioned Henri earnestly, “that I haven’t told you yet of the big driving reason for this dangerous journey?”

“Well,” admitted Billy, “you didn’t exactly furnish a diagram, but that didn’t make much difference. The main point to me was that you tried to say good-by to your twin.”

“Billy,” continued Henri, drawing closer, and in voice only reaching the ear at his lips, “behind a panel in the Château Trouville are gold and jewels to the value of over a million francs. It is all that remains of a once far greater fortune. My mother, when all hope of turning back the invading armies had gone, fled to Paris in such haste that she took with her little more of worth than the rings on her hands. She may be in want even now—and she never wanted before in her life. I am her free man—my brothers are in the trenches with the Allies somewhere, I don’t know where. It’s up to me to save her fortune and pour it into her lap.”

“It’s the finest thing I know,” said Billy. “Show me the panel!”

Planning their first movement abroad, the boys that night decided to make for Dover after landing. It was a most convenient point from which to proceed to the French coast, and there they expected to find two tried and true friends, airmen, too, Captain Leonidas Johnson and Josiah Freeman, formerly employed as experts in the factory at home, and both of whom owed much to Billy’s uncle in the way of personal as well as business favors.

What happened at Dover has already been told, and now to return to them, stranded in the water off the Belgian coast.

CHAPTER IV.
DRAGGED BY A ZEPPELIN.

For hours Billy had been stationed as lookout on the stranded hydroplane. He was taking cat-naps, for it had been quite a while since he last enjoyed a bed. While an expected round-shot from the shore did not come to disturb the tired airmen, something else happened just about as startling. In a waking moment Billy happened to look up, and there he saw a great dirigible circling above the harbor. The boy’s eyes were wide open now.

“Henri,” he loudly whispered, prodding his sleeping chum with a ready foot. “Look alive, boy! They’re coming after us from the top side!”

Henri, alive in a jiffy, passed a friendly kick to Captain Johnson, and he in turn bestowed a rib jab upon Freeman. Then all eyes were glued on the hovering Zeppelin.

A mile seaward, from the armored side of a gunboat, burst a red flash wreathed by smoke; then a dull boom. The Zeppelin majestically swerved to southwest course, all the time signaling to masked batteries along the shore.

“There is bigger game around here than us,” said Captain Johnson. “If only those tanks were chockfull of petrol again we’d show them all a clean pair of heels.”

“If we don’t move somehow and soon,” gloomily put in Freeman, “we’ll be dead wood between two fires.”

The Zeppelin was now pushing skyward, buzzing like a million bees. Just then a Taube aëroplane, armored, swooped toward the gunboat, evidently British, which had endeavored to pot the Zeppelin. The scout-ship below turned its anti-aircraft cannon and rifles against the latest invader, cutting its wings so close that the Taube hunted a higher and safer level. The Zeppelin had again lowered its huge hulk for the evident purpose of dropping on the gunboat some of the bombs stored in its special armored compartment.

Another sputtering jet of flame from the gunboat and one of the forward propellers of the airship collapsed and a second shot planted a gash in her side. Sagging and wabbling, the dirigible headed for the Belgian coast. When the black mass loomed directly above the stranded sea-plane, Freeman gave a warning shout:

“Down with you! She’s trailing her anchor!”

By quick thought, in that thrilling, fleeting moment, Billy grabbed the swinging anchor as it was dragged along near to him and deftly hooked one of its prongs under the gun carriage at the sea-plane’s bow.

With jerks that made every strut and wire crackle under the strain, the hydroplane, on its polished floats, skipped over the waves, pulled this way and that, now with elevated nose, now half under water, but holding firmly to the trailing cable.

Henri, with head over the wind-screen, keenly watched the shore for a likely landing-place. The men in the cars of the disabled Zeppelin did not seem to notice the extra weight on the anchor—they had troubles of their own in getting the damaged dirigible to safe landing.

Billy crouched in the bow-seat, his eyes fixed on the straining cable. In his right hand he clutched a keen-edged hatchet, passed forward by Freeman. Half drowned by the spray tossed in his face he awaited the word from Henri.

“Say when, old pard,” he cried, slightly turning his head.

“If she pulls straight up and down,” remarked Captain Johnson in Freeman’s ear, “it’s good night.”

The coast line seemed rushing toward the incoming sea-plane, bouncing about in the wide wash.

Henri sighted a friendly looking cove, and excitedly sang out the word for which his chum was waiting:

“Now!”

With the signal Billy laid the hatchet with sounding blows upon the cable—and none too soon the tough strands parted.

The sea-plane with the final snap of the hacked cable dashed into the drift and plowed half its length in the sandy soil. The Zeppelin bobbed away into the gathering dusk.

Following the bump, Captain Johnson set the first foot on the sand. Stretching himself, he fixed a glance of concern on the sea-plane.

“I wonder if there is a joint in that craft that isn’t loose?” he questioned. “But,” he added, with a note of sorrow, “it’s not likely she will ever see her station again, and so what’s the difference?”

“It was some voyage, though,” suggested Freeman in the way of comfort.

“It was bully,” maintained Billy. “If we had traveled any other way, Henri there would no doubt by this time have been wearing red trousers and serving the big guns around Paris, and I might have been starving while trying to get change for a ten-dollar bill in that big town.”

“Do you think you will like it better,” asked Freeman, “to stand up before a firing squad with a handkerchief tied ’round your eyes?”

“I should worry,” laughed Billy.

“There’s no scare in you, boy,” said Captain Johnson, giving Billy an affectionate tap on the back. “Now,” he continued seriously, “it’s hard to tell just what sort of reception we are going to get hereabouts. Old Zip and I” (turning to Freeman) “certainly made the people on the paved ‘boardwalk’ stare with some of our flying stunts. But that was last year.”

“That reminds me,” broke in Billy, “that I have given the high ride to several of the big ‘noises’ on all sides of the war, and they one and all promised me the glad hand if I ever came to see them.”

“That, too,” said Freeman, with a grin, “was a year or more ago.”

“Speaking of time,” put in Henri, “it also seems to me a matter of a year or two since I had anything to eat. I’m as hungry as a wolf.”

“I’m with you on the eat proposition,” Billy promptly cast his vote. “Where’s the turkey hid, Captain?”

“It’s a lot of turkey you’ll get this night,” grimly replied the captain. “There’s a little snack of sandwiches in the hold, cold roast, I believe, but that’s all. We didn’t equip for a sail like this.”

Billy and Henri lost no time rummaging for the sandwiches, and while the meat and bread were being consumed to the last crumb by the hungry four, Billy furnished an idea in place of dessert:

“We don’t want to lose ten thousand dollars’ worth of flying machine on this barren shore. Henri and I are going to do a bit of scouting while the soldier crowd are busy among themselves up the coast. If there is any petrol to be had we are going to have it.”

Fitting action to the words, the two boys moved with stealthy tread, Indian fashion, toward the ridge that shadowed and concealed the temporary camp of the airmen. Captain Johnson did not wholly approve of this venture on the part of the boys, but they did not give him time to argue against it, and were soon beyond recall.

CHAPTER V.
RAN AWAY WITH AN AUTOMOBILE.

Night had come and in front of one of the handsome hotels that had escaped splintering when Ostend, the famous seaside resort, under fire of big guns, was swept by shot and shell, Gun-Lieutenant Mertz had just stepped out of a big gray automobile that looked like a high speeder—the kind that has plenty of power. The driver of the car did not wait for a second order to leave the lieutenant and speed away in the direction of the mess quarters, where he knew that there was a fragrant stew being prepared for duty men coming in late.

The fighting of the day had mostly taken place far up the coast, and the chance had arrived for a loosening of belts in Ostend.

With a final chug the big gray car came to a standstill in a quiet corner off the main street, while the hungry chauffeur joined his comrades in what they called pot-luck. The movements of this man had been watched with a large amount of interest by a pair of visitors, who had chosen the darkest places they could find while approaching the dining hall of the soldiers.

“Gee!” whispered one of the watchers to the other. “I can almost feel a bullet in my back.”

From the companion shadow: “Take your foot out of my face, can’t you?”

Two heads uplifted at the sight of the rear lights of the car.

Again an excited whisper:

“Now for it, Billy!”

The soldiers were laughing and talking loudly in the dining hall.

The boys crawled along, carefully avoiding the light that streamed from the windows of the hall. A moment later they nimbly climbed into the car. Henri took the wheel and gently eased the big machine away into the shadowy background. Then he stopped the car and intently listened for any sound of alarm. The soldiers were singing some war song in the dining hall, keeping time with knives and forks.

It was a good time for the boys to make a start in earnest, and they started with no intention of stopping this side of the ridge, behind which their friends were anxiously watching and waiting for them.

Henri drove cautiously until he felt sure that they were out of the principal avenues of travel, and then he made things hum. He guided straight toward a clump of trees showing black against the moon just appearing above the crest of the hill. The riding grew rough, but the speed never slackened. At last the goal was reached. The car bumped and bounced up, and bounced and bumped down the hill.

Leaping from the machine, Billy fairly rolled to the feet of the startled crew of the sea-plane.

“So help me,” exclaimed Captain Johnson, “if I didn’t think it was a section of the Fourth Corps after our scalps!”

“Hurry!” gasped Billy. “Get anything that will hold oil, and get it quick!”

For the moment confused, Johnson and Freeman seemed tied fast to the ground.

Henri rolled into the circle and added his gasp:

“We’ve a touring car up there and its tanks are loaded!”

Then the boss mechanic, Freeman, came to the front. From the depths of the engine room in the motor end of the sea-plane he pulled a heavy coil of rubber tubing and in a few minutes made attachments that tapped the automobile’s plentiful supply of petrol and sent it gurgling into the empty tanks of the sea-plane.

Across the sandy plain came the sound, faintly, of shouting. Maybe somebody had discovered that the officer’s car was missing.

As Billy suggested with a laugh:

“Perhaps they think some joy riders took it.”

“I’m not going to stay to find out what they think,” very promptly asserted Captain Johnson. “Heave her out, boys!”

The sea-plane took the water like a duck. Obedient to Johnson’s touch it leaped upward, the motors were humming, and with a cheery cackle Freeman announced:

“We’re off again.”

“And they are showing us the way,” cried Billy, as a great searchlight inland sent a silver shaft directly overhead.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Riflemen on the ridge were popping at the sea-plane.

“There’s a salute for good measure,” observed Henri.

“Lucky we’re out of range of those snipers, but I’m thinking the batteries might attempt to take a whack at us.”

With these words Captain Johnson set the planes for another jump skyward.

“There’s the good old moon to bluff the searchlight,” sang out Billy from the lookout seat. “And, see, there’s a row of smokestacks sticking out of the water. Sheer off, Captain; don’t let those cruisers pump a shot at us. They’d wreck this flyer in a minute!”

The sea-plane was taking the back-track at fine speed when valve trouble developed in the engine room. The cylinders were missing fire, and all of Freeman’s expert tinkering failed to prevent the necessity of rapid descent. The hum of the motors died away, and Captain Johnson dived the craft seaward with almost vertical plunge. The sea-plane hit the water with a dipping movement that raised a fountain over the lookout, and it was Billy that cried “Ugh!” when he was drenched from head to foot by the downfall of several gallons of cold water.

The aircraft had alighted only a few rods from land, in a shallow, marshy bay. The place was as silent as the grave, save for the calling of the night birds and the gentle lapping of the waves. Freeman with the aid of an extra propeller fitting, paddled the craft into shore, and was soon busy trying to find out what was the matter with the machinery. Captain Johnson held the acetylene flare over Freeman’s shoulder to enable the engineer to see where repair was needed.

Billy and Henri, out of a job for the time being, concluded that they would do some exploring. After wading through the mud, weeds and matted grass for a hundred yards or so they reached firm footing on higher ground.

CHAPTER VI.
DEATH RIDE OF AN AVIATOR.

The moon was shining brightly, and over the plain that stretched out before them on the left the boys could see quite a distance, but no sign of human life presented itself. On the right, however, a half mile away, was a sharp rise of ground and tall trees. Toward this point they decided to proceed. Then it was that they first realized the experience of standing on a battlefield.

Crossing the field they saw the ravages of artillery projectiles—deep, conical holes, five or six feet in diameter. Here, too, they found shrapnel cases, splinters of shells, skeletons of horses, fragments of bloodstained clothing and cartridge pouches. The moonlight made the path as open as day, and each object reminding of terrible conflict was apparently magnified by the white shine of the moon. The boys walked as in a dream, and were first awakened by the flapping wings of a huge bird, frightened by their approach from its perch on a broken gun-carriage.

“Let’s get out of this,” mumbled Henri; “it gives me shivery shakes; it’s a graveyard, and it seems like ghosts of dead soldiers are tracking us.”

Billy was short on nerves, but if he had been called on for a confession just then he might have pleaded guilty to a tremble or two.

He managed to put on a bold front, however, and was about to give Henri a brace by telling him they would have to get used to the ways of war, when there was a sound like the roll of distant thunder far to the south.

“What’s that?”

Billy’s sudden question drove the ghosts away from Henri’s mind, and both boys ran like deer up the hill to the line of trees.

“There’s no storm over there,” panted Henri. “You can’t see a cloud as big as a man’s hand.”

“That isn’t thunder!” exclaimed Billy. “That’s cannon! They’re shooting at something!”

“There,” cried Henri, “that sounds like fire-crackers now.”

“Rifles,” observed Billy.

“Look!” Billy was pointing to what appeared, at the distance, to be a speck on the face of the moon.

The sound of gunfire increased, report after report—crack, crack, boom, boom, boom.

Across and far above the moonlit plain, arrow-like, sped a winged shadow, growing in size as it swiftly approached.

“An aëroplane!” The boys well knew that kind of a bird. They called its name in one voice.

“That’s what has been drawing the fire of those guns.”

Billy had found the problem easy to solve when he noted the getaway tactics of the coming airman.

The boys could now hear the whirring of the motor. Fifty yards away the aëroplane began to descend. Gracefully it volplaned to the earth under perfect control. It landed safely, rolled a little way, and stopped.

The boys, without a second thought, raced down the slope to greet the aviator, like one of their own kind should be greeted, but as quickly halted as they drew nearer.

The airman was dead.

He had been fatally wounded at the very start of his last flight, but just before death, at its finish, had set his planes for a descent. With his dead hands gripping the controllers, the craft had sailed to the earth. He wore the yellowish, dirt-colored khaki uniform of a British soldier.

Billy and Henri removed their caps in reverence to valor and to honor the memory of a gallant comrade who had been game to the last.

Releasing the dead aviator from his death grip on the controllers, the boys tenderly lifted the corpse from the driver’s seat in the machine and covered the upturned face and glazed eyes with the muffler the airman had worn about his neck. The body was that of a youth of slight build, but well muscled. In the pockets of his blouse the boys found a pencil, a memorandum book and a photograph, reduced to small size by cutting round the face—a motherly type, dear to all hearts.

The usual mark of identity of soldiers in the field was missing, but on the third finger of the left hand was a magnificent seal ring, on which was engraved an eagle holding a scroll in its beak and clutching a sheaf of arrows in its talons.

Billy took possession of these effects with silent determination to some day deliver them to the pictured mother, if she could be found.

“The ring shows that he came of a noble house,” said Henri, who had some knowledge of heraldry.

“He was a brave lad, for all that, and noble in himself,” remarked Billy, who had the American idea that every man is measured by his own pattern.

So they gave the dead youth the best burial they could, at the foot of one of the giant trees, and sadly turned away to inspect the aëroplane that had been so strangely guided.

It was a beautiful machine, all the fine points visible to their practiced eyes—a full-rigged military biplane, armor plates and all. The tanks of extra capacity were nearly full of petrol.

“It must have been a short journey, as well as a fatal one,” said Billy. “Very likely the launching was from a British ship, not far out at sea, and the purpose was to make a lookover of the German land forces around here.”

“I’d like to take a little jaunt in that machine,” sighed Henri, who could not tear himself away from the superb flyer.

“It may turn out that you will—stranger things have happened.”

Billy proved to be a prophet, but it was not a “little jaunt,” but a long ride that the boys took in that aëroplane.

An unpleasant surprise was in immediate store for them.

They decided that it was about time that they should return to their friends and the sea-plane, and were full of and eager to tell Johnson and Freeman of the results of their scouting.

“Guess the captain won’t wonder at anything we do since we brought that automobile into camp,” declared Billy. “You know he said that he hadn’t any breath to save for our next harum-scarum performance.”

“I can just see Freeman grin when I tell him that we have found a flying-machine that can beat his sea-sailer a mile. That’s my part of the story, you know,” added Henri.

“I can’t help thinking of the poor fellow who rode her last,” was Billy’s sober response.

The boys were nearing the point where the heavy walking began. Otherwise they would have broken into a run, so eager were they to tell about their adventures.

Coming out of the weeds and ooze, they stood looking blankly at the spot where the sea-plane had rested.

The sea-plane and their friends were gone!

CHAPTER VII.
ALONE ON A STRANGE COAST.

When the boys made the startling discovery that the sea-plane had disappeared and that they were alone on the strange coast, they plumped down on the sand without a single idea in the world except that they were utterly tired out and weak from hunger.

They could not account in any way for the mysterious happening that had deprived them of their tried and true friends.

Not for a moment did they imagine that they had been deserted by intent. They knew full well that even in the face of great danger Captain Johnson and Josiah Freeman were not the kind of men who would fly away, without sign or signal, and leave a comrade in distress, let alone these boys for whom either of the men would have spilled his last drop of blood.

“The coast patrol nabbed them,” was the opinion of Billy.

“They were held up at the point of a bayonet, I’ll bet,” argued Henri, “for there is no sign of a struggle, and we would have heard it if there had been any shooting.”

“However it was,” figured Billy, “they never quit of their own accord; they would never have left us unless they had been hauled away by force. Now it is up to us to skirmish for ourselves, which, anyhow, I expected to do sooner or later. There’s no use staying here, for they will be coming after us next.”

Wearily the boys plodded through the slush, backtracking to the foot of the hill where they had left the aëroplane. The fading moon was lost behind a wall of slowly rising mist, and the dawn was breaking in the east when the boys finally stumbled upon the place that held their prize. Wholly exhausted, they threw themselves full length upon the ground and slept like logs.

The sun was broadly shining when Billy reached out a lazy arm to poke his chum, who was snuggled up in the grass and breathing like a porpoise.

“Get up and hear the birds sing,” yawned Billy.

“I’d a good sight rather hear a kettle or a coffee-pot sing,” yawned Henri.

“Right O,” agreed Billy.

The boys rolled over alongside of the aëroplane. A twin thought came to them that the late aviator surely must have carried something to eat with him.

It proved a glorious truth. There was a knapsack behind the driver’s seat and a canteen swinging under the upper plane.

“A meat pie!” Billy made the first find.

“Crackers and cheese!” Heard from Henri.

How good these rations tasted—even the lukewarm water in the canteen was like nectar. With new life the boys took up the problem presented by the next move.

Henri climbed into the aëroplane and very carefully inspected the delicate machinery, making free use of the oil can. Billy otherwise attended to the tuning of the craft, and everything was as right as a trivet in less than a half hour.

“Let me see”—Billy was thumbing a well-worn notebook—“as we fixed it on the steamer, Dunkirk was the starting place. But that storm entirely changed the route—a longer way round, I guess. No more Ostend for me, though I do wish I knew for sure whether or not they had Captain Johnson and Freeman locked up there. Let’s try for Bruges; that’s only a short distance from here, and we can follow the line of the canal so we won’t get lost.”

“And we can fly high,” suggested Henri, “high enough to keep from getting plugged.”

“I am not bothering so much about the ‘high’ part of it as I am about where we’ll land,” said Billy. “We may fall into a hornet’s nest.”

“Let’s make it Bruges, for luck,” suggested Henri.

“Here goes, then,” exclaimed Billy, getting into steering position, Henri playing passenger.

Off they skimmed on the second stage of their journey to the valley of the Meuse, in France.

They had entered the zone where five nations were at each other’s throats.

So swift was their travel that our Aviator Boys very soon looked down upon the famous old belfry of Bruges, the old gabled houses, with bright red tiled roofs, mirrored in the broad canal crossed by many stone bridges. That is what Bruges means, “bridges.” To the young airmen, what the town meant just now was a good dinner, if they did not have to trade their lives or their liberty for a chance to get it.

“Nothing doing here,” lamented Henri, who did the looking down while Billy looked ahead. “I see that there are too many gray-coats visiting in West Flanders. And I heard that the Belgians have not been giving ‘days at home’ since the army came. Now I see that it is true.”

“Having fun with yourself?” queried Billy, in the sharp tone necessary to make himself heard in a buzzing aircraft.

Henri ignored the question, snapping: “The book says it’s thirty-five miles from here to Ypres, straight; keep your eyes on the waterways, and you can’t miss it.”

“Another thing the book says,” snapped Billy, in response, “is that that old town is in a district as flat as a floor, and, if nothing else, we are sure of a landing.”

“I wish we were as sure of a dinner.” Henri never lost sight of the dinner question.

The flight was continued in silence. It was a strain to keep up conversation, and the boys quit talking to rest their throats. Besides, there was not a drop of water left in the canteen.

It was late afternoon when the boys saw Ypres beneath them. It was just about the time that the Allies were advancing in the region between Ypres and Roulers, the town where the best Flemish lace comes from. But the Allies had not yet reached Ypres.

Henri glimpsed the remains of some ancient fortifications, and urged Billy to make a landing right there.

“A good place to hide in case of emergency,” he advised.

Billy agreed, set the planes for a drop, and came down neatly in the open.

“We ought to be able to get a change of linen here, for that’s the big business in this town.” Henri was pretty well posted, for in his cradle he had slept on Ypres linen.

There was no work going on in the fertile fields around the town. The Belgian peasants thereabouts were either under arms or under cover.

“When King Louis set up these old ramparts he probably did not look forward to the day when they would provide a hangar for a flying-machine.” This from Billy, who was pushing the aëroplane to the shelter of a crumbling fortalice.

“If we had dropped in on the fourteenth century, as we did to-day,” observed Henri, “I’ll warrant that we would have scared everybody out of Flanders.”

“It doesn’t appear, as it is, that there is a person around here bold enough to approach us.”

Billy seemed surprised that they had not run into trouble at the very start.

“‘Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you,’” quoted Henri. “It goes something like that, I think.”

“Listen!” Billy raised a hand to warn Henri not to move nor speak aloud. The sound that had put Billy on the alert was a long, low whistle. It was repeated, now and again. Curious, and also impressed that the whistler was trying to attract their attention, they began a search among the ruins. Over the top of a huge slab of stone suddenly popped a red cap, covering a regular Tom Thumb among Belgians—about four feet from tow head to short boots.

Henri said “Howdy” to him in French, at the same time extending a friendly hand. The youngster, evidently about fifteen, shyly gave Henri two fingers in greeting. He bobbed his head to Billy. Then he removed his red cap and took out of it a soiled and crumpled slip of paper. On the slip, apparently torn from a notebook, was scribbled:

“This boy saw you fly in, told us how you looked, and, if it is you, this will let you know that the Germans brought us here for safe-keeping yesterday. Cap.”

“Glory be!” Billy could hardly contain himself, and the little Belgian took his first lesson in tangoing from an American instructor. “As soon as it is dark we will move on the outer works,” was his joyous declaration.

“Say, my young friend,” he added, “do you know where we can get a bite to eat while we’re waiting?” Henri translated, and the little Belgian was off like a shot. About dusk he returned with some bread and bologna, looped up in a fancy colored handkerchief. And there was plenty of water in the Yperlee river.

Along about 11 o’clock that night Leon, the little Belgian, whispered, “Venez” (Come).

CHAPTER VIII.
ONE DARK NIGHT IN YPRES.

The sky had turned dark over Ypres, rain had commenced to fall in streets so remarkably clean that they really did not need this bath from above. It was just the kind of a night, though, for the risky venture undertaken by our Aviator Boys. They were going to see their old friends, and nothing but a broken leg would check their willing steps on the way to the prison house that contained Captain Johnson and Josiah Freeman.

Leon knew the best way to get there. The darkest ways were light to him, and he was not afraid that rain would spoil his clothes. To guide these wonderful flying boys was the happiest thing that had happened to him in all his days, and, too, he had a strong dislike for the Germans who had invaded the homeland. His father was even now fighting in the ranks of the Allies at Nieuport, and his mother was wearing her heart out in the fields as the only breadwinner for her little brood.

There were comparatively few of the gray troops then in the town. The main columns were moving north to the Dixmude region, where the horizon was red with burning homes. To guard prisoners, garrison the town and care for the wounded not many soldiers were then needed in Ypres, and non-commissioned officers mostly were in command.

The streets were empty and silent, and lights only occasionally seen. At midnight Billy, Henri and Leon paused in the deep shadow of a tall elm, the branches of which swept the front of the dingy red brick dwelling, two stories in height and heavily hung with vines. Leon knew the place like a book, for he had been serving as an errand boy for the guards quartered there.

He whispered to Henri that the men who had sent the note were in the front room on the second floor.

Behind the brick wall at the side of the house was a garden. Billy and Henri, on Leon’s advice, decided to try the deep-set door in the garden wall as the only way to get in without stirring up the sentry in the front hall. With the first push on the door the rusty hinges creaked loudly.

The front door of the house was thrown open, and a shaft of light pierced the darkness. The boys backed up against the wall, scarcely daring to breathe. The soldier looked up at the clouds, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, muttered something to himself, turned back and slammed the door with a bang. At this the boys gave a backward heave, and were through the door and into the garden.

This interior was blacker than the mouth of an inkwell. Billy cautiously forced the door back in place.

“Got any matches?” Billy had failed to find any in his own pockets.

Henri was better supplied. In the military aëroplane he had not only found matches, but also a box of tapers, and he had taken the precaution of putting them in his pockets when they left the machine.

With a little flame, carefully shaded, the boys discovered a shaky-looking ladder in a grape-arbor at the back of the garden.

By degrees, foot by foot, they edged the ladder alongside of the house, and gently hoisted it to the window of the upper room, which Leon had assured them was the right one.

“Let’s shy some pebbles against the window to let them know we are here,” was the whispered suggestion of Henri.

“Nothing doing.” Billy was going to have a look in first. He was already crawling up the ladder. Henri laid hold of the lower rungs, to keep the rickety frame steady, and Leon stationed himself at the garden door, ready and alert to give warning whistle if anything happened in front.

Billy tapped softly on the window pane. The sash was silently raised, and Billy crept in.

Not a word had been spoken, and no signal from the room above.

Standing in the dark and the rain in the dismal garden, Henri was of half a mind to follow his comrade without further delay. It was an anxious moment.

A bird-like trill from Leon. With this call Henri left the ladder and tiptoed to the garden door to join the little Belgian and find out what was the matter.

From far up the silent street, coming with measured tread, a regiment was marching. The watchers at the door of the garden now plainly heard gruff commands and the other usual sounds of military movement.

“I must let Billy know; the soldiers are headed this way and might be coming to move the prisoners somewhere else.”

Henri had started back toward the house, when suddenly the window was thrown up, and, with a sound like the tearing of oil-cloth, Billy came down the ladder and landed with a bump on the graveled walk.

Henri and Leon, in the space of a second, rushed to the side of their fallen comrade.

In the street outside there was a crash that shook the silence as though the silence was solid. A regiment had grounded arms directly in front of the house.

Billy, who for a moment had been stunned by the force of his bump into the walk, at the end of a twenty-foot slide, jumped to his feet, and in a breath urged his companions to run.

“Let’s get out of this; over the wall with you!”

The boys bolted for the back wall of the garden, dragging the ladder, and speedily mingled on all fours on the coping, the top of which was strewn with broken glass.

Hanging by their hands on the outer side of the wall they chanced the long drop. As luck would have it, they landed in soft places—on a pile of ashes and garbage.

Lights sprang up in the windows of the house behind them. It was evident that a change of base was to be made.

“Did you see our fellows?” was Henri’s first eager question, as he shook off his coat of ashes.

“You bet I did,” coughed Billy, whose face had plowed a furrow in the ash heap. “A bunch of the gray men in a motor boat pounced on them while they were tinkering with the sea-plane and took them and the plane in tow to Ostend. They were brought down here so that General So and So, I don’t remember who, could look them over, but the general and his brigade have gone off somewhere to the north to try and stop the advance of the Allies. The captain and Freeman both say they are in no special danger and are very kindly treated. They have their papers as American citizens and agents abroad for our factory. Then there is the storm story as their reason for being blown into the war zone without fighting clothes.

“How did I come to quit that house yonder like a skyrocket? Well, just as the captain and I had finished exchanging experiences, and old Josh Freeman had nearly broken my ribs with a bear hug, one of the rounders in the house concluded to pay a visit to the room where we were. We didn’t hear him until he reached the top of the stairs, where he stopped to sneeze. With that sneeze I did my leaping act. That soldier never saw me; I’ll wager on that.”

“What’ll we do now?” That was more what Henri wanted to know.

“Get back to the machine before daylight.” Billy’s main idea was that the safest place was a couple of thousand feet in the air.

Daylight was not far away. Henri and Leon held a committee meeting to determine the best route back to the fortifications. The little Belgian was sure of his ground, and before sunrise, by countless twists and turns, the trio were back to the stone hangar where the aëroplane rested.

The first faint streaks of dawn gave light enough for Billy to do his tuning work about the machine. Henri was bending over, in the act of testing the fuel supply, when there was a thud of horses’ hoofs on all sides of the enclosure, followed by a shrill cry from Leon:

“Sauvez vous! Vite! Vite!” (Save yourself! Quick! Quick!)

With that the little Belgian frantically tugged at the aëroplane, and not until our Aviator Boys had swung the machine into the open and leaped to their places in the frame did the brave youngster quit his post. Then he ran like a rabbit, waving quick farewell, and disappeared in the wilderness of stone.

Lickety clip the aëroplane moved over the ground. Then up and away!

A pistol shot rang out. A cavalryman nearest to the point of flight was behind the weapon.

Barely a hundred feet in the air and Henri leaned heavily against Billy.

“I’m hit!” he gasped, “but don’t let go. Keep her going!”

CHAPTER IX.
TESTING BILLY’S NERVE.

It was indeed a severe test of Billy Barry’s nerve that was put upon him in this trying moment. To let go of the controllers of the aëroplane would mean the finish; to neglect for an instant his comrade, whom he believed to be bleeding to death, was agony. Almost blindly he set the planes for a nearly vertical descent from a dizzy height of three thousand feet which the machine had attained before Billy had fully realized that he was holding across his knees the inert body of his beloved chum. Like a plummet the aircraft dropped eastward. With rare presence of mind Billy shifted for a rise when close to the ground, and managed to land without wrecking the machine. A scant ten feet, though, to the right, and the aëroplane would have crashed into a cow-shed and all would have been over.

An old woman, digging potatoes nearby, was so frightened when this winged bolt came down from the sky that she gave a squawk and fell backward into the big basket behind her.

When Billy had tenderly lifted out and laid Henri upon the turf, he ran to the well in front of the neat farmhouse, filled his leather cap with water, and hastened back to bathe the deathly pale face and throbbing temples of his wounded chum. With the cooling application Henri opened his eyes and smiled at the wild-eyed lad working with all his soul to win him back to life.

“I am not done for yet, old scout,” he faintly murmured.

Billy gulped down a sob.

“You’re coming around all right, Buddy, cried Billy, holding a wet and loving hand upon Henri’s forehead.

“The pain is in my right shoulder,” advised Henri; “I have just begun to feel it. Guess that is where the bullet went in.”

“Let me see it.” Billy assumed a severe professional manner. The attempt, however, to remove the jacket sleeve from the injured arm brought forth such a cry of pain from Henri that Billy drew back in alarm.

“Ask the woman for a pair of shears,” suggested Henri, “and cut away the sleeve.”

“Hi, there!” called Billy to the old woman, who had risen from the basket seat, but still all of a tremble.

“Get her here,” urged Henri. “I can make her understand.”

Billy, bowing and beckoning, induced the woman to approach.

Henri, politely:

“Madame, j’ai ete blesse. Est-ce que nous restons ici?” (Madam, I have been wounded. Can we rest here?)

“Je n’ecoute pas bien. J’appelerai, Marie.” (I do not hear good. I will call Marie.)

With that the old woman hobbled away, and quickly reappeared with “Marie,” a kindly-eyed, fine type of a girl, of quite superior manner.

Henri questioned: “Vous parlez le Français?” (You speak French?)

“Oui, monsieur; j’ai demeure en le sud-est.” (Yes, monsieur; I have lived in the southeast.)

The girl quickly added, with a smiling display of a fine row of teeth: “And I speak the English, too. I have nursed the sick in London.”

“Glory be!” Billy using his favorite expression. “Get busy!”

Marie “got busy” with little pocket scissors, cut the jacket and shirt free of the wound, washed away the clotted blood and soon brightly announced:

“No bullet here; it went right through the flesh, high up; much blood, but no harm to last.”

Cutting up a linen hand-towel, Marie skillfully bandaged the wound, and, later, as neatly mended the slashes she had made in Henri’s jacket and shirt.

For ten days the boys rested at the farmhouse, Henri rapidly recovering strength.

They learned much about Belgium from Marie. She laughingly told Henri that his French talk was good to carry him anywhere among the Walloons in the southeastern half of Belgium, but in the northwestern half he would not meet many of the Flemings who could understand him. “You would have one hard time to speak Flemish,” she assured him.

Henri confided to Marie that they were bound for the valley of the Meuse.

“La la,” cried the girl, “but you are taking the long way. Yet,” she continued, “you missed some fighting by coming the way you did from Bruges.”

On the eleventh morning Henri told Billy at breakfast that he (Henri) was again as “fit as a fiddle.” “Let’s be moving,” he urged.

“All right.” Billy himself was getting restless. They had been absolutely without adventure for ten long days.

But, when Henri returned from a visit to the aëroplane, he wore a long face.

“There’s no more ‘ammunition’ in the tanks,” he wailed. “There isn’t as much as two miles left.”

“That means some hiking on the ground.” With this remark Billy made a critical survey of his shoes. “Guess they’ll hold out if the walking is good.” Henri, however, was not in a humor to be amused.

“I say, Billy, what’s the matter with making a try for Roulers? Trouble or no trouble, we’ll not be standing around like we were hitched. It would be mighty easy if we could take the air. No use crying, though, about spilt milk.”

Marie, who had been an attentive listener, putting on an air of mystery, called the attention of the boys to a certain spot on the cleanly scrubbed floor, over which was laid a small rug of home weaving. The girl pushed aside the rug and underneath was shown the lines of a trap-door, into which Marie inserted a chisel point. The opening below disclosed a short flight of steps leading down to an underground room, where candle light further revealed, among other household treasures, such as a collection of antique silver and the like, two modern bicycles.

“The boys who rode those,” said Marie, pointing to the cycles, “may never use them again. They were at Liège when it fell, and never a word from them since. On good roads and in a flat country you can travel far on these wheels. Take them, and welcome, if you have to go.”

In an hour the boys were on the road. They left two gold-pieces under the tablecloth and a first-class aëroplane as evidence of good faith.

CHAPTER X.
ON THE ROAD TO ROULERS.

Our Aviator Boys had not for a long time been accustomed to use their legs as vigorously and so continuously as required to make an endurance record on a bicycle. They had no great use for legs when flying. But they were light-hearted, and had been well fed, had enough in their knapsacks to stave off hunger for several days, and, barring the fact that Henri was still nursing a sore shoulder, ready to meet the best or the worst. Billy carried a compass, also a mind full of directions from Marie, and firmly believed that he could not miss the good old town in the fertile meadow on the little river Mander. At least Henri and himself could live or die trying.

They had already observed indications that, even with the strenuous call to the colors of the Belgian men, the little kingdom was thickly populated, and about every square inch of farm land was under close cultivation.

“Suppose people lived this close together in Texas,” remarked Billy, as they pedaled along; “why, a man as tall across the front as Colonel McCready wouldn’t have room enough to turn around.”

“Yes, and from what we have heard of the war crowd working this way we’ll have to have more room than this to keep from running into them.” Henri was not in the same mood that he was when he found the aëroplane tanks empty.

“Nothing like a scare-mark so far,” was Billy’s comment. “I have seen only women in the fields.”

“Even the dogs have work to do here.”

Henri went on to explain that the small farmers, as a rule, cannot afford to keep horses, and just now could not keep them if they had them.

The boys had been fortunate in their first day’s travel as cyclists, in that they had not even fallen in with the stragglers of the contending armies reported in terrible conflict inside the Dixmude-Nieuport line.

In the afternoon of the second day, however, they took the wrong road, one leading to Bixchoote.

In the distance they heard heavy and continuous artillery fire, and decided to turn back. “Out of the frying-pan into what next?” as Billy put it, when they found the woods north of Ypres were aflame with bursting shells. Fighting in front and fighting in the rear.

“The sides are still open,” declared Henri, “even if both ends are plugged.”

“But which side shall it be?” asked Billy.

The situation was one of great peril to the boys.

To get a better idea of the lay of the land, they rolled their bicycles into the woods alongside the road and climbed into the low hanging branches of a huge tree, then ascended to the very top of this monarch of the forest.

From their lofty perch they could see quite a distance in all directions, but they had no eyes for any part of the panorama after the first glance to the south. The firing line stretched out before their vision, presenting an awe-inspiring scene.

The shell fire from the German batteries was so terrific that Belgian soldiers and French marines were continually being blown out of their dugouts and sent scattering to cover. The distant town was invisible except for flames and smoke clouds rising above it.

The tide of battle streamed nearer to the wood where the boys had taken shelter. From their high point of vantage they were soon forced to witness one of the most horrible sights imaginable.

A heavy howitzer shell fell and burst in the midst of a Belgian battery, which was making its way to the front, causing awful destruction—mangled men and horses going down in heaps.

Henri was in a chill of horror, and Billy so shaken that it was with difficulty that they resisted a wild desire to jump into space—anything to shut out the appalling picture.

The next instant they were staring down upon a hand-to-hand conflict in the woods, within two hundred yards of the tree in which they were perched. British and Germans were engaged in a bayonet duel, in which the former force triumphed, leaving the ground literally covered with German wounded and dead, hardly a man in gray escaping the massacre.

“I can see nothing but red!” Henri was shaking like a leaf.

Billy gave his chum a sharp tap on the cheek with the palm of his hand, hoping thus to divert Henri’s mind and restore his courage.

Billy himself had about all he could do to keep his teeth together, but, by the unselfish devotion he gave to his comrade, he overcame his fear.

“Come, Buddy,” he pleaded; “take a brace! Easy, now; there’s a way to get out of this, I know there is. Put your foot here; your hand there; steady; we’ll be off in a minute.”

By the time the boys had descended to the lower branches of the tree, Henri was once more on “even keel,” in the language of the aviator.

A long limb of the tree extended out over the road. On this the boys wormed their way to the very tip, intending to drop into the highway, recover their bicycles, and make a dash for safety across the country to the west, following the well defined trail worn smooth by the passage of ammunition wagons.

As they clung to the limb, intently listening and alert for any movement that would indicate a returning tide of battle in the immediate neighborhood, a riderless horse, a magnificent coal-black animal, carrying full cavalry equipment, came galloping down the road, urged to ever increasing speed by the whipping against its flanks of swinging holsters.

“Here’s the one chance in the world!”

Billy swung himself around and leaned forward like a trapeze performer in a circus, preparing for a high dive into a net.

The horse’s high-flung head just grazed the leaves of the big branch, bent down under the weight of the boys.

Billy dropped astride of the racing charger, saved from a heavy fall in the road by getting a quick neck hold, seized the loose bridle reins with convulsive grip and brought the foam-flecked animal to a standstill within fifty yards. This boy had tamed more than one frisky broncho down in Texas, U. S. A., and for a horse wearing the kind of a curb bit in his mouth that this one did, Billy had a sure brake-setting pull.

Henri made a cat-fall into the dusty road and right speedily got the hand-up from his mounted comrade.

Off they went on the trail to the open west, with clatter of hoofs, and the wind blowing free in the set, white faces of the gallant riders.

CHAPTER XI.
THEY MEET A GENERAL.

“I don’t know where we are going, but we’re on the way,” sang Billy, whose spirits now ranged to a high pitch. “This beats anything we’ve rung up yet in our target practice over here,” he gloated. “Isn’t he a jolly old roadster?” Billy had checked the horse to a slow canter, after a run of two miles.

“Let’s have a bit of a rest.” Henri’s sore shoulder was troubling him. He still had his knapsack with some jumbled food in it. Billy had lost his food supply when he made his leap on the horse.

While the animal was cropping the short grass along the trail the riders took their ease by lounging on the turf and feeding on their crumbled lunch.

“This is a thirsty picnic,” asserted Billy. “My throat is as dry as powder. Let’s see if there isn’t a spring ’round here.”

Hooking the bridle reins over his arm, Billy led the way on a search for water. At the bottom of a wooded hill the boys found themselves in a marsh, and though bitter and brackish the water was a grateful relief to their parched tongues. The horse acted as though he had not had a drink for a week.

A little further on, in a meadow, the boys made a singular discovery. They were amazed to see an important looking personage in a gorgeous uniform, covered with decorations, wandering about the meadow like a strayed sheep.

“What the dickens is that?” exclaimed Henri.

“Give it up.” Billy couldn’t even make a guess. “He shows gay but harmless. I think I’ll look him over.”

On approaching the richly attired wanderer the boys with wonder noticed that he carried a gold-tipped baton and from a shiny knapsack on his shoulders rolls of music protruded.

The strange being kept proclaiming that he was going to direct the German military music on a triumphal parade through the streets of Paris. Henri could understand that much of the disconnected talk, and also that the speaker was the head musician of the German army in Belgium. He had been cut off from his command and become possessed by a fit of melancholy from which the boys found it impossible to rouse him. They divided with him what remained of the contents of Henri’s knapsack, but could not induce him to proceed with them.

“It’s a pity that a man like that should lose his reason. But this dreadful war strikes in most any kind of way, and if it isn’t one way it’s another.”

Henri was still thinking of the horrible happening when the Belgian battery was literally blown to pieces under his very eyes.

“There’s a peaceful sleeper here, anyhow,” said Billy, pausing, as they trudged along, leading the horse toward the trail. He pointed to a little mound above which had been set a rude wooden cross. It was the grave of a French soldier, for on the cross had been placed his cap, showing the name of his regiment. On the mound, too, had been scattered a few wild flowers.

“Somebody who had a heart for the cause or the fighter must have passed this way,” observed Henri. “The burial of a soldier near the battle lines hasn’t much ceremony, I am told, and surely doesn’t include flowers.”

The boys slept that night in the open, with the saddle for a pillow. They were awakened just before dawn by the restless antics of Bon Ami (“Good Friend”)—for so Henri had named the horse. The animal snorted and tugged at the tether as if scenting some invisible approach through the woods, at the edge of which the three had been passing the night.

Billy and Henri were on their feet in an instant, rubbing their eyes and trying to locate by sight or sound among the trees or elsewhere in the shadowy landscape the cause of Bon Ami’s disturbed action.

Even if the boys had suddenly made up their minds to run to cover, they would not have had time to go very far, for in the instant a scout troop rode out of the woods and straight at them.

The cavalrymen spread in fan shape, and in a moment Billy, Henri and Bon Ami were completely surrounded.

In good but gruff English the ranking officer of the troop commanded: “Come here and give an account of yourselves.”

Billy and Henri made haste to obey, and looking up at the officer on horseback offered their smartest imitation of a military salute. Peering down at them the cavalryman exclaimed:

“So help me, they’re mere boys. Who let you out, my fine kiddies, at this top of the morning? Here, Ned,” calling to one of the nearest troopers, “bring the hot milk and the porridge.”

Billy was becoming slightly nettled at this banter. He had no desire to be taken seriously, but yet not quite so lightly.

“I am an American citizen, sir, traveling, with my friend, on personal business.”

“Will you listen at that now?” laughed the cavalryman whom the first officer had called “Ned.”

“Do you know or have you thought that ‘personal business’ is just now rather a drug on the market in these parts?”

The chief was again addressing the boys, or, rather, Billy, who had elected himself spokesman.

“It does appear that the soldiers have the right of way here,” admitted Billy, “but we came in such a hurry that we couldn’t stop to inquire in particular about the rules.”

“That’s a pretty good horse you have.” It was light enough now for the officer to take in the fine points of Bon Ami. “Where did you get him?”

Billy explained the circumstances.

“Well, you are plucky ones,” commented the officer. “Now,” he continued, assuming again the tone of command, “saddle your steed and fall in.”

The troop wheeled back toward the north and the boys rode stirrup to stirrup with the bluff captain.

At the noon hour the riders reached the field working quarters of the British commander. A small headquarters guard lounged on the grass around the farmhouse that sheltered the general and his staff, a dozen automobiles and motorcycles were at hand and grooms were leading about the chargers of the officers.

The scout troop halted at a respectful distance and dismounted.

“Put on your best manners,” suggested the troop captain as he preceded the boys in quickstep to headquarters.

After a brief conference with an orderly, the boys were ushered into the presence of several officers in fatigue uniform seated at a table littered with papers. At the head of the table was a ruddy-faced man, clean-shaven, with iron-gray hair, to whom all heads bent in deference.

“We have visitors, I see.” The general’s tone and manner were kindly.

The boys stood speechless, their eyes fixed upon the little Maltese badge of honor suspended from the left breast of the general’s coat by a crimson ribbon. It was the Victoria Cross!

CHAPTER XII.
WITH THE BRITISH ARMY.

“Now, my young men,” said the general, speaking briskly and to the point, “what are you doing here, where are you going, and is there anything else you wish to say?”

As Billy had not as yet opened his mouth, he thought the general was rather ahead of his questions in the last quoted particular.

“Allow me, general, to introduce Mr. Trouville, a native of France, who only lacks the years to vote in America. He has the desire, I assure you. As for myself, I am William Thomas Barry of Maine, United States of America, known as Billy—and together we are known as the Aviator Boys. We are in the flying trade, and with your kind permission we would like to fly now.”

The officers observed the boys with new interest. The London Times had some months ago printed the experiences of a prominent English visitor to America, who had seen these young aërialists in some of their sky-scraping exhibits, and had even taken a short flight with Billy.

“We military fellows are all great for aviation—it’s a big card in this war game”—this observation from the member of staff seated nearest the general—a thoroughbred sort of man who also wore the badge of valor. “And more than that,” he added, “I have a boy of my own in the flying corps of the army.”

It occurred to Billy that this officer might care to hear the sad story of the death flight of the British youth that they had witnessed on the shores of the North Sea.

Billy, in real dramatic style, described the thrilling incident. There was no lack of attention on the part of his listeners; especially did the man who looked like a thoroughbred seem lost to everything else but the tale the boy was so earnestly telling. When Billy produced from the inside pocket of his blouse the photograph and ring that he had taken from the heart pocket and finger of the dead aviator there was strained silence, first broken by the man who had been most intent as a listener.

“It was my boy, my own son!”

This man who had faced shot and shell with never a tremor on many a blackened battlefield, and had won the magic initials “V. C.” after his name, bowed his head in grief and not ashamed of the sob in his throat.

“Some day, God willing,” he softly said to Billy, “you shall guide his mother and me to that resting place.”

A bugle call outside aroused the officers to the grim business of the hour. The roar of another battle would soon be on.

The general turned the boys over to the care of a veteran soldier, a sergeant, with strict orders that they should not be allowed to leave the rear of the brigade about to advance.

Billy and Henri, however, had the opportunity of observing during their first actual army experience, even though of the rear guard, the striking device of a French officer in order to steady his men, in an infantry regiment, called upon for the first time to face the discharge of German shells. For a moment the men hesitated, and even made a slight movement of withdrawal. Instantly the officer seemed to have taken in the situation. The boys heard him shout:

“Halt! Order arms!”

Then, quite coolly, he turned his back upon the enemy—for the first and last time—whipped out his camera, called upon his men not to move, and proceeded to take a leisurely snapshot of his company while shells were falling all around.

The men were astonished, but the officer’s purpose was served. The company was steadied, and the boys, from the top of a supply wagon, watched them go gallantly to work. Sad to relate, the watchers also saw the gallant officer fall soon afterward, struck on the head by a fragment of shell.

“I tell you, General Sherman was right in what he said about war.” Billy was very positive in this expression of opinion.

On that day of fearful fighting the boys saw an entire German regiment perish in the rush of water which swept through the trenches after the Allies had destroyed the dikes; they saw hundreds of men and horses electrocuted on the heavily charged wire entanglements before the trenches.

At nightfall Billy and Henri, heartsick with the horror of it all, crawled under the wagon cover and fought nightmares through the long hours before another day.

It was raining in torrents when the boys peeped through the tear in the wagon shelter early the next morning, and it had turned sharply cold. The roar of the batteries had slackened for the time being, and it was a welcome moment for Billy and Henri, who on the day previous had heard more gunpowder racket than ever they did on all the Fourths of July they had ever known rolled into one.

Stepping out gingerly into the mud, the boys looked around for their friendly guardian, Sergeant Scott. He was nowhere to be seen among the few soldiers in khaki uniforms and woolen caps moving about among the wagons. They soon learned that the sergeant had made a capture during the night of one of the enemy’s secret agents who had penetrated the lines for the purpose of cutting telephone wires. The spy or sniper carried cutters and a rifle. From behind the lines with the rifle he had been shooting at men passing to and fro, but when he ventured inside with the cutters the sergeant nabbed him, though the invader was cleverly disguised in British outfit. Both captor and captive were up-field at an “interview,” from which only the sergeant returned.

When he observed the boys shivering in their tracks, Sergeant Scott called to a teamster to fetch a blanket from one of the wagons. Borrowing a knife from the teamster, the sergeant slashed the big army blanket in two in the middle, doubled each fold and made two slits in the top.

“Jump into these, my Jackies,” he ordered; “shove your arms through. Now you won’t catch a frog in your lungs, and you’re swell enough to make a bet on the races. Come along and tighten your belts with something in the way of rations.”

The boys needed no second bidding, and their belts were very snug when they had finished.

“By the way,” confided the sergeant, “Colonel Bainbridge has taken a heap of interest in you youngsters. His son, I heard, lost his life in one of those flying machines.”

“Yes, we were the ones that told him about it. He’s sure a grand man,” added Billy.

“Well,” continued the sergeant, “there are some of us going to work around toward Lille and the River Lys region to assist in extension of the Allies’ line there. If Colonel Bainbridge commands the movement, between ‘you and I and the gate-post,’ yours truly wants to go ’long.”

“So do we!” The boys spoke as one.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE BOYS UNDER FIRE.

Colonel Bainbridge did command, and Sergeant Scott, Billy Barry and Henri Trouville went along.

“I wish they would let us ride Bon Ami.”

Billy had noted the handsome horse they had captured prancing along carrying a heavyweight cavalryman, while Henri and himself were perched beside a teamster on the front seat of a supply wagon.

“Maybe they were afraid that you would run away,” drawled the teamster. “Sergeant Scott says you’re too skittish to turn loose.”

“The sergeant will be putting handcuffs on us next,” laughed Billy.

The teamster set his teeth in a plug of tobacco, snapped the whiplash over the big bay team and with a twinkle in his eye started the verse of some soldier ditty:

“‘Said Colonel Malone to the sergeant bold,

These are the traps I give you to hold,

If they are gone when I come back

You’re just the boy I’ll put on the rack.’”

“That’s just it,” added the teamster, changing from song to the usual drawl, “if the sergeant lets you come to harm the colonel would cut the stripes from his coat. And what’s more the sergeant is kind of struck on you himself. Git-ap,”—to the horses.

It was at the crossing of the Lys at Warneton that the boys had another baptism of fire.

The crossing was strongly held by the Germans with a barricade loopholed at the bottom to enable the men to fire while lying down. The Allies’ cavalry, with the artillery, blew the barricade to pieces and scattered the defenders.

In the square of the town the boys saw the greatest display of fireworks that ever dazzled their young eyes.

One of the buildings appeared to leap skyward. A sheet of flame and a shower of star shells at the same time made the place as light as day.

Out of the surrounding houses the Germans poured a terrific fire from rifles and machine guns.

The Allies’ cavalry got away with a loss of eight or nine men, and Sergeant Scott headed volunteers that went back and carried away wounded comrades from this dreadful place.

Billy and Henri rushed at the sergeant when he returned from this daring performance and joined hands in a sort of war dance around their hero.

“The Victoria Cross for yours, old top!” cried Billy.

“You ought to have it this minute!” echoed Henri.

“Quit your jabber, you chatterboxes,” said the big sergeant playfully, shaking his fist at his admirers, but it could be plainly seen that he was mightily pleased with the demonstration.

“You and I will have to do something to keep up with this man,” remarked Billy to Henri, with a mock bow to the sergeant.

“None of that,” growled the sergeant, “your skylarking doesn’t go on the ground, and not on this ground, anyhow.”

But the boys had grown tired of being just in the picture and not in its making.

“The sergeant doesn’t seem to think that we have ever crossed a danger line the way he coddles us.” Billy was ready for argument on this point.

“Wish we had him up in the air a little while,” said Henri, “he wouldn’t be so quick to dictate.”

It was in this mood, during the advance and on the night of the next day, that the boys eluded the vigilant eye of the sergeant long enough to attempt a look around on their own account.

In the dark they stumbled on the German trenches.

Billy grasped Henri’s arm and they turned and made for the British lines, as fast as their legs could carry them, but the fire directed at them was so heavy that they had to throw themselves on the ground and crawl.

There was no cover at hand, and the chances looked mighty desperate for the pair, when Billy saw, close by, an enormous hole in the ground, made by the explosion of a “black maria,” the name given by the soldiers to the projectiles of the big German howitzers.

Into this the boys scrambled, panting and scared to the limit.

“Wouldn’t this jar you?”

Henri had no answer to Billy’s quickfire query. He didn’t think it required any just then. He was “jarred,” in the way the word was used.

“It’s a pretty pickle we’re in,” Henri managed to say when a shell screamed over the hole.

“It sure is,” admitted Billy, as a round-shot scattered dust particles and showered them into the hiding place.

“‘We won’t go home till morning,’” this warble by Henri, a rather feeble attempt to be gay.

“Maybe you won’t go home at all,” was the gloomy expression of opinion by Billy.

“I wonder if the sergeant has missed us yet?” Henri was wondering.

The ground was shaking and then a sound as though the earth was being hammered with ten thousand clubs in as many giant hands.

In the early dawn the Allies were charging the German entrenchments.

The howitzers thundered; battle cries and commands resounded.

The Allies’ forces whirled by and on both sides of the underground shelter where the boys were crouching.

With the clash of arms behind them Billy and Henri clambered out of the hole and spurted for dear life and safety.

When the troopers came back from the fight, the sergeant, with heavy stride, came to the wagon into which the boys had crawled.

“Come out of there,” he commanded.

The boys instantly obeyed and in sheepish manner presented themselves to the severely erect soldier.

“You’ll be buried without the benefit of a preacher if you try another trick like that.” This was all the sergeant said, but he looked daggers.

CHAPTER XIV.
IN AN ARMORED MOTOR CAR.

On the way to Arras the boys had their first experience aboard an armored motor car, equipped with machine guns. Quite a promotion from the teamster’s seat of a supply wagon!

How the sergeant ever consented to let his charges join the crew of Belgians operating the war machine is not known. Perhaps he was not told until it was too late to object.

But there they were, Billy and Henri, as large as life, out “Uhlan hunting,” as the soldiers put it. The boys knew that a Uhlan was a kind of light cavalry, or lancer, in the German army, and they had heard that he was “game,” but never before in the sense of game to be hunted.

As for that, hardly a day passed but the boys learned something new from the soldiers.

But a short time before at La Bassee they had seen one of these armored cars return from a dash ahead of the main body loaded with spoils in the shape of lancer caps, busbies, helmets, lances, rifles, and other trophies, which the crew distributed as souvenirs to a crowd in the market place.

The next day one of the cars that went out never came back. The Uhlans probably took it for a trophy.

Whenever you see a splendid piece of tapestry or hangings displayed in a window, museum, or house, you may think of Arras, the little old town on the right bank of the narrow little river Scarpe, right in the center of the line of battle between Lille and Amiens, and remember that our boys were now following that line in France.

From the armored car the boys in the distance saw that famous old belfry, said to be 240 feet high, rising gracefully above the town hall, and on top of which was a huge crown. A day later this tower was wrecked by a shell in furious bombardment.

During this journey in the armored car the boys were filled with admiration of the dash and skill displayed by the Belgian crew. They were also greatly interested in the hardy cyclists, who apparently without effort kept up with the pace of the big machine. In some of the villages through which they passed, the inhabitants met the cyclists with kisses, in some of the roads the cyclists met barricades and machine guns.

“If a doctor told you that you needed change to help your health, Henri, you can write him that you’re getting it.”

Billy was finding this new war game very much to his liking.

“You’ll have word from the doctor without writing,” retorted Henri, “if you don’t quit standing up in the car.”

Even then bullets were whizzing past them. The car had suddenly come upon a small party of the German mounted troops, firing with short-arms from the saddle.

The Belgian gunners instantly responded from the car and swept the road.

“On to Arras!”

Billy made the grim soldiers smile with his enthusiasm.

When the car rolled into the quaint old town of Arras, the boys confessed that they had never seen quite the like of it before.

“There’s a building that I’d like to move to Bangor,” said Billy, pointing to the Hotel de Ville, one of the finest in France, with its Gothic façade rising upon seven arches of different sizes.

“There’s a lot of rare old houses here, I tell you,” asserted Henri, “but I never saw them until now, except on postcards. By the way, Billy, take a look at those and think of the days of Christopher Columbus.”

Henri referred to the Petite place and the Grande place, curious relics of the long gone days of Spanish rule, with their queer gables and old arcades resting on curiously shaped sand-stone columns.

“This is the town, you know,” advised Henri, “where Robespierre was born.”

“Humph! This war has kicked up a bigger muss in France than ‘Roby’ ever did.”

Billy was not inclined to concede that anything had ever created a stir ahead of that in which he was mixing.

The stir of the next day was, indeed, something to be remembered. Some of the biggest of the German guns were brought into action.

Billy and Henri had been napping, and never were naps more rudely disturbed.

Shells from the great guns used by the bombarding forces had a way of starting on their course with a minute-long shriek, which seemed to come from the shell itself. When the boys’ eyes had been cleared from sleep they could not only plainly see the projectiles in the beginning of their flight, but also distinctly observe the bellowing air rushing back to fill the vacancy left by the discharge and bounding and rebounding in a disturbed sea of gas.

“What a sight!” cried Billy when the first period of nervous strain had passed.

“Something fierce.” Henri’s comment was boy-like.

The boys were pacing in one of the antique streets with fragments of wood and chips of stone falling about them when they heard a shout, followed down the avenue by the shouter. It was the sergeant rattling like a milk wagon with his military fixings.

“Hustle, you young bearcats; get to cover!”

With that the sergeant yanked each boy by the shoulder into a hospital building nearby.

“Here’s help for you,” said the sergeant to one of the Red Cross nurses. “Keep them busy, and,” he added with especial emphasis, “inside.”

That gentle nurse, a young English girl, the boys learned afterward, was struck by a shell and carried dying on a litter from a battlefield where she had been attending the wounded. Her name was Winnie Bell, and she rests in the cemetery at Le Mans, with the bodies of French and German soldiers around her, in whose service she gave up her noble young life.

The boys moved about with the nurse among the wounded, constantly growing in number.

“Oh! the pity of it all,” she murmured, putting a cup of water to the quivering lips of a sufferer, a mere lad, wearing the brilliant uniform of a French trooper, with a gaping wound in his shoulder.

Henri, leaning forward to give the nurse a bandage from the packet he was carrying, caught sight of the soldier’s upturned face.

“My brother Francois!” he moaned, dropping on his knees beside the litter.

The wounded soldier opened his eyes, and the agony of his hurt did not keep him from smiling.

CHAPTER XV.
FAREWELL TO FRANCOIS.

“You’re feeling better now; I know you are; really, you must say that, Francois. I can’t bear to see you lying there so still and so white.”

Henri hovered about the cot of his wounded brother after the surgeon had dressed and bandaged the injured shoulder.

He had forgotten the war storm that raged outside, and even for the moment ceased to remember that his dearest chum, Billy, was ever at his elbow with ready sympathy.

“Tell me, Francois,” Henri pleaded, “that you are going to get well.”

“Of course he is,” assured a mild voice from the foot of the cot, “but you must come away and give him a chance to sleep.”

“Sleep! With all that roar outside?”

“Perhaps, my boy, the surgeon gave him something that would tend to quiet him. You must calm yourself, and remember that you have your duty with me. He did his duty without fear or question. Are you less a man than your brother?”

The nurse well knew how to manage in a case of this kind. She had tested the metal of a proud young spirit, in the full belief that it would ring true.

“Come along now,” she gently urged. “Let me show you that thought of self does not fit here.”

They stood at the cot side of a mortally wounded Belgian soldier.

“We found a letter in his pocket,” softly voiced the nurse, “saying that he was enclosing a pair of shoes for his three-year-old baby with the money he had earned as a scout in King Albert’s army. Here are the little shoes,” lying on the covering sheet.

Billy felt like he was choking, and Henri simply lifted the border of the nurse’s apron to his lips.

It was several days before Henri obtained permission to talk with his brother. There was so much to talk about that the few minutes allowed were as so many seconds.

“But I’ve news from mother!” confided Henri to Billy—“she was all right when Francois last saw her in Paris, and she got the word I sent her about my going to the château, and why I was going. It was Francois who wrote me about the gold and jewels being left behind. Mother tried to get word to me not to take the risk; she said that more than all else she wanted me to come straight to her if I could. It makes me ashamed to see Jules and Francois under the colors and I without, but I’ve made up my mind to do this thing I have set out to do, and I’ll stick until it is finished.”

“You can count me in to the finish, Buddy. You stick to the job and you can safely bet that I’ll stick to you.”

“Don’t I know that, my truest of friends?”

Henri gave Billy a hand-squeeze that made that husky youngster wince.

Francois was rapidly regaining strength, his wound nicely healing, and, with the progress, his interest in Henri’s mission to the Meuse was first in mind.

“In my letter,” he said to Henri, “I feared to give details that might be read by other eyes than yours. You only would know even the name and location of our house by that letter. But I got it all right from mother about the secret hiding place of the fortune.

“Neither Jules, you, nor I had ever learned of the more than a century-old plan of the Château Trouville, handed down by a great-grandfather, which included an underground way from the hills through the valley and ending in the north wing of the château.

“Mother herself had almost forgotten that such a place was in existence until she recalled that some thirty years ago our father gave her what he jokingly called a honeymoon trip through the tunnel, and she also recalled that it was a journey which she never repeated. She spoiled a new dress going through.

“Of course, you and I know that the old house itself is full of queer corners, walks between the walls, panel openings and all that; we played hide-and-seek there enough, but the outside passage we never struck. Father might have told us about it if he had lived.”

“I suppose the tunnel came in handy when old times were squally,” suggested Henri.

“Never handier, I think, than it may be to you if you ever get within a mile of what you are going after,” replied Francois; “you will never get in by the front door the way things are now.”

“Wish you would go along with Billy and me.”

“Not I. I travel only under orders. I am a soldier. You are still your own master. Now, while you are here, ask nurse to hand you my coat, if there is anything left of it.”

“Ah, thank you, nurse.”

“Feel in the lining back of the breast pocket, Henri. That’s it. Cut the seam, brother. There you are.”

Henri held in his hand a thin roll of paper.

“Open it.”

Henri did as directed and saw that it was a miniature map, lined with red ink.

With their heads together the brothers studied the outlines, Francois explaining that he made this copy from a section of the original parchment.

“Jules has a copy, too,” continued Francois, “but he is in the same boat with me—he can’t quit his post. As I said before, it’s up to you and your friend to get the family treasure out of the château. If you can get near enough, this paper will show you the way to get in and out unseen, even if the house be full of soldiers.”

Henri borrowed needle and thread from the nurse and sewed the paper inside the collar of his blouse.

A week later the sergeant informed the boys that marching orders had been given, and they were to move with a detachment to the southwest.

“Going our way, hurrah!”

Henri then remembered that this meant parting from his brother, and was less inclined to rejoice when this sad thought came to his mind.

Francois was seated near one of the low windows of the hospital building, enjoying the bright sunlight that shone through the open casement.

He had a smile in his eyes when he saw Henri, with knapsack on his back, approaching.

“I know it’s good-by, brother,” he said. “But take it easy, old boy. We’ll have a grand reunion some day.”

Henri lovingly clasped the free hand of the young soldier, in silent farewell, bravely squared his shoulders and marched away to join Billy and the sergeant, waiting at the door.

A bugle sounded and the soldier column swung away from war-torn Arras.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE VALLEY OF THE MEUSE.

From a hillside the boys looked upon and over the great battlefield where the German army was then trying to break through the line of barrier forts between Verdun and Toul and the opposing French forces.

In front lay the level valley of the Meuse, with the towns of St. Mihiel and Bannoncour nestling upon the green landscape.

Beyond and behind the valley rose a tier of hills on which the French were then striving with all their might to hold an intrenched position.

Bursting shells were throwing up columns of white or black fog, and cloudlets of white smoke here and there showed where a position was under shrapnel fire.

The sergeant had presented the boys with a high-powered field glass, and to their delight they picked out an occasional aëroplane hovering over the lines.

“Look at that little snapper,” cried Billy; “that’s a French wasp; it’s smaller and lighter than our kind; they call it the ‘peasant’s terror.’ Gee! Seventy-five miles an hour is nothing to that plane.”

“The aviator is giving signals!”

Henri had his eyes glued to the glass.

“Looks like a hawk circling around a chick.”

Billy was again taking his turn.

“He’d better climb quick.”

Henri noted that some of the big mortars were trying for the airman, and he had learned that these mortars could throw a shell a mile or more in the air.

The aviator evidently was aware of the fact, too, for he went higher and higher, until the machine looked like a mere scratch in the sky.

The boys returned to the trenches with Rene Granger, a lad of eighteen, who had enlisted, he said, at Lorraine, and who had already won the rank of corporal in a French regiment.

The three were together when the colonel of Rene’s regiment called for a volunteer to carry the orders of the staff to the different companies. The colonel did not conceal the fact that the mission was one of great danger. The young corporal stepped forward, and offered his service. He listened attentively to the colonel’s instructions. Then with a quiet c’est bien (it is well), he started.

The boys saw him reach the first trench in safety and deliver his message.

The next stage of his journey was a dangerous one, for he had to pass over an open space of 300 yards, swept by the enemy’s fire. He went down on his hands and knees and crawled, only lifting his head in order to see his way.

Within a few yards of the trenches a bullet struck him in the thigh. He crept behind a tree, hastily dressed the wound, then dragged himself to the trench, where he delivered his message to the commander.

They tried to stop him there, but the boy refused.

“I have given my word,” he said.

There remained still two companies to visit. One of them was quite near, but the other was 600 yards away, far advanced in the zone of fire.

Rene began his terrible journey. At every few yards he was compelled to stop, so fierce was the suffering caused by his wound. Bullets whistled around him, and one pierced his kepi.

He was within twenty yards of safety when a shell burst in front of him and fragments struck him, inflicting a terrible wound. He lay unconscious, but he had been seen from the trenches and two ambulance men ran out, placed him on a stretcher, and carried him to their company.

Rene became conscious once more, called for the commanding officer, and almost with his last breath whispered the orders he had been given.

“Oh, that he could have lived!”

Henri could scarcely realize that their new-found friend, their cheery companion of the past few days, was cold in death. But they brought him back to his regiment, in scarred body, for honor.

“He kept his word,” said the colonel, who turned away that none might see what a soldier must hide.

“There’s a boy that was all gold; I am grateful for having known him, and better for it, too; he knew how to live and how to die.”

This was Billy’s brief but heartfelt tribute to the memory of their fallen comrade.

But our boys must push on to their goal, and though their story must be seamed and crossed by these woes of war, yet it is their story.

“Château Chantillon still stands, and there is Château Chambley, and there, yes, there, is Château Trouville—my home.”

Henri was drawing the distance close with the powerful field glass, and talking over his shoulder to Billy.

“With a wall of steel around them,” commented Billy.

“But we are going to get through it,” was Henri’s determined reply.

“Speed the day!”

Billy was ready for the effort. Besides, he had been thinking a good deal about Bangor in the last few days.

“If those old guns over there,” said Henri, “would only let us alone until we found the mouth of that tunnel it’s a sure thing that we could be under the roof of the Trouvilles in less than two hours.”

“Maybe the old map’s no good.”

Billy never had been much of a hand for ancient history.

“If it’s all the same to you, we’ll give it a test to-morrow night.”

Henri did not take kindly to Billy’s unbelief.

“If we can get away from the sergeant, I will be at your heels,” announced Billy, and he meant every word of it.

CHAPTER XVII.
THE POINT OF ROCKS.

The French and allied forces were located in a range of wooded hills running north and south along the east bank of the Meuse. They had fortified steeply terraced slopes with successive rows of trenches, permitting line above line of infantry to fire against an advancing enemy.

At the foot of the hillside is the village of Vignueilles, a little stone-built town that had been shot into ruins by artillery. A boy from this village, who had taken refuge with the soldiers on the high ground, found a former playmate when he met Henri. This boy’s father had once been employed as a gardener by the Trouvilles.

As Billy said, “they jabbered French until they made him tired.”

The new friend had the given name of Joseph, but Henri called him “Reddy.” Billy called him a “muff,” because he could not understand half that the new boy said.

But Joseph, or Reddy, by any name was just now a tower of strength, even if the tower was only five feet three inches up from the ground.

As Leon, the little Belgian, served at Ypres, so Reddy was going to prove a big help in the adventure at hand.

He had chased rabbits into almost every hole in these hills, and in the woods he could travel even beyond the German frontier by as many different routes as he counted fingers on his hands.

Billy, Henri and Reddy were in close conference all day, so quiet, and so cautious, for the once, in their movements, that the sergeant wavered between suspicion and anxiety, the first because he thought his charges must be up to something, and the second for the reason that he feared they were going to be ill.

He might have imagined relief from anxiety by thinking the boys were tremendously hungry had he seen their frequent trips during the day to the places where provisions were stored.

Had he seen them, however, taking several small safety lanterns from the ammunition department, suspicion would have stood first in his mind.

“The tunnel begins at a point 500 yards directly west of Fort Les Paroches, and it is called ‘point of rocks,’” Henri reading the notes and following with a pin point the lines of the little map that Francois had given him.

The mentioned fort had been silenced only the day before by German mortars, and its location was now marked by a huge mound of black, plowed up earth.

“That’s only three miles from here.”

Reddy was eager to show his knowledge of the neighborhood.

Henri passed Reddy’s statements on to Billy in English.

“‘Bowlders laid in the form of a cross show the place of entrance,’” Henri continuing to read.

“‘Stone slab at foot of cross. Remove stone and find iron ring in oak cover. Lift cover and find stone steps.’”

“Seems simple enough if we had a derrick.”

Billy was still doubtful.

“The only thing I fear,” said Henri, paying no attention to Billy’s pert remark, “is that with time the markings may be wiped out by changes of earth formation, forest growth or the like.”

“No,” quickly advised Reddy, “if it’s the place that I’ve seen there are still a lot of rocks there.”

“I suppose you could find the place for us, couldn’t you, Reddy?” asked Henri.

“Yes! Yes!”

Reddy was on his feet to furnish proof without further delay.

“We can get there through the ravine,” he was in a hurry to add.

“When the sergeant goes to inspect the outposts, then, let’s make the break.”

Billy was catching the spirit of the occasion.

So it was while good Sergeant Scott was performing a military duty the boys shouldered their well filled knapsacks, and, with Reddy leading, in the dusk succeeded in eluding the sentry first in the way.

The cunning of Reddy as a woodsman was wonderfully shown by the manner in which he took to the brush and the way he avoided notice. It seemed hardly any time at all before the boys were silently picking their way, shadow-like, in the depths of the pitch-dark ravine.

They had heard no challenge until Billy planted his foot on a fallen twig, which cracked like a pistol shot.

“Who goes there?”

Sharp question, in French, from above.

Down went the boys flat on the ground, concealed by overhanging bushes.

The sentry repeated the challenge.

All as silent as the grave.

The boys scarcely breathed. They knew the guard was one of the allied forces, but yet they had no desire to take issue with him. Even if he only turned them back to quarters their chances of getting away again would be few and far between. The sergeant would see to that.

Some ten minutes passed. It seemed longer to the truants in the ravine.

Then, as if satisfied that the noise was without menace, the sentry resumed his pace, and the boys flitted on as if shod with velvet.

The path took an upward turn, and Reddy nudged his companions to a halt.

“We’re there,” he whispered.

CHAPTER XVIII.
AT THE MOUTH OF THE TUNNEL.

“We’re on some good old fighting ground,” remarked Henri, who was well versed in history relating to the country around Château Trouville. “The Roman legions held forth here centuries ago.”

“They would not have ‘held forth’ any great while under that German fire the other day.”

Billy was not far wrong on that proposition.

The boys were doing this talking while Reddy was lighting the lanterns. These lanterns were bull’s-eyes, and could be turned dark in an instant.

There was no shelling of this spot that night, for there was not enough of the fort left to make a target, and the trenches were attracting all the fire.

The boys could proceed with their work with some degree of safety.

Reddy painfully located the rocky point by falling over a big stone in the dark, the boys having decided to go it blind until they actually had to use the lights.

“You haven’t broken a leg, have you, Reddy?” Henri anxiously inquired.

“No, I guess not,” was Reddy’s reply, “but I think I’ve kicked a toe loose, anyhow.”

The boys switched the masks off their lanterns and three slender bars of light danced among the stones.

“Don’t see any cross.”

“Be patient, Billy,” urged Henri, “we haven’t been here five minutes yet.”

For the next hour the boys circled around the place without finding a trace of the markings described in the map.

Billy and Henri sat down to rest, but Reddy, who seemed never to tire, continued to explore on his own account. He walked over to the ruins of the fort, and began to measure, by taking long steps, on a line some distance from the point where the boys had been searching for the cross.

Suddenly Reddy stopped. Billy and Henri could see that the ball of light in his lantern had quit moving.

“Wonder if he has found anything?” Henri jumped at the prospect.

“Nothing like going to see,” and Billy with the words was off like a shot.

Sure enough, Reddy had struck a warm trail. All of the cross was not under his feet, but there was sufficient outline to show sections of the original design. Some of the stones had shifted away, but there, beyond doubt, was that for which the boys were looking.

The lantern rays were all directed to the foot of the outline, that is, the end of the longest row of bowlders.

The directions had read: “Stone slab at foot of cross.”

The boys bent to their knees and with faces close to the earth.

“There’s a corner of it!”

Reddy was making all the discoveries.

Billy and Henri commenced clawing the dirt like hungry chickens. Reddy stood up and used his feet to better advantage. This combined effort was rewarded by a clear view of the slab.

It was there, and Billy could not now deny it.

“Remove stone and find iron ring in oak cover.”

But how were the boys to “remove” that stone? Reddy had a lightning thought. All his thoughts came that way.

Away he went, chasing the lantern ray ahead of him. In that heap of crumpled earth and stone, lately Fort Les Paroches, there was surely something in the way of iron or steel out of which to make a stone lifter.

Reddy was back in a few minutes dragging not only one but two steel bars which had been knocked like nine-pins from their fastenings.

“Here’s levers for you,” he announced gleefully.

Billy saw what he had, even if he did not understand what he said.

Henri and Billy with the bar-points punched holes at the side of the slab and got a purchase. Then they pried with all their strength. At first the slab did not budge an inch.

Reddy added his weight to one of the bars and the slab was loosened in its setting.

“Now another heave!” panted Billy.

“Up she comes!” said Henri.

The slab was lifted high enough to give a chance for shoulder pressure, and the rest was easy, for when once out of its setting the stone had no great weight.

The lanterns revealed the fact that the workers had been rightly directed up to the minute.

The oak cover was there, and also the iron ring. Through this ring the boys shoved the bars and pulled the cover away from the opening.

The stone steps were there; somewhat crumbly, but there. The directions were verified to the finish.

“Don’t rush in there until you give the fresh air a chance to go first.”

Reddy knew a lot of things that he had never learned from books.

But now it was Henri who was getting impatient.

“It ought not to take long for the tunnel to clear, and, what’s more, we are going to get out of sight before daylight.”

Daylight was rapidly approaching.

CHAPTER XIX.
THROUGH THE SECRET PASSAGE.

“It’s me first this time,” declared Henri. “I’m on the way home, and it’s the duty of this son of my mother to open the door for our guests.”

“You bluffer, you,” said Billy, “what you want is to take the first risk of going into that hole. I know you.”

Henri did not stop to argue. He cat-footed it down the stone steps, holding his lantern in front of him at arm’s length.

Billy came next, and Reddy last. The last boy, however, was not the least when it came to thinking. He thought that it would be a good idea to fix the oak cover so that he could support it with his hands and let it drop again over the opening when the three should have gone underground.

It would give a chance prowler no opportunity to find the mouth of the tunnel, and either follow them or set up an alarm that would result in the boys being caught like rats in a trap.

So Reddy wisely closed the way behind them, and thus insured that there would be no disturbance from the rear.

The tunnel route was not an inviting one. The rounded roof in many places had sagged and closed in to such an extent as to almost choke the passage, and great care had to be taken by the boys so as not to bring a mass of stonework and earth down upon their heads. This dangerous condition was chiefly where the tunnel ran through the low ground, for when the passageway began to ascend the boys were enabled to go much faster and in greater safety.

But in the tunnel entire the air was stifling and from the cracks in the slimy walls came hideous crawling things.

It was fully an hour before the boys had any assurance that the tunnel really did have an end.

This assurance was a heavily grated door set in solid masonry.

“Now we are done,” was Billy’s despairing prediction.

“Never say quit; that isn’t like you.”

It was seldom that Henri assumed the rôle of bracer-up to Billy. It had been generally the other way, but Billy was willing to acknowledge that he was not much of a cave man. He liked the open too well.

There were faint streaks of daylight threading through the grated spaces of the door. That was something for which to be thankful.

Reddy was giving the rusty grating a lively shake when with a clang something hit the stone floor of the tunnel.

It was a key of the kind that locksmiths used to make by the pound.

The key had been suspended from a hook at the side of the door, and Reddy’s vigorous attack on the grating had caused it to fall.

Henri pushed the key into the ponderous lock and with a strong-arm twist succeeded in making it turn. The rusty bolt screeched as it was drawn back, but the door could be opened, and it was opened by the main pulling strength of three husky youngsters.

Just on the other side of the door was the rounded base of a tower, and, looking upward, the sky could be seen through many openings in the stonework.

There were four doors in this circular room, the one by which the boys had just entered, and the other three in a row, close together, directly opposite the tunnel entrance.

“This,” explained Henri, “is ‘Old Round Tower,’ far more ancient than the château itself, and one of the landmarks along the Meuse. I never cared much for it myself as a play place; it was too gloomy, and rats used to swarm here. I remember of seeing this door to the tunnel, but always thought it led to some cellar, and cellars are no novelties on these grounds. I don’t know how many casks of wine are underground about here, but there used to be a big lot.

“This door,” Henri was pointing to the middle one in the row, “opens on a passage that runs back of the state dining-hall of the château, and ends at a panel on the right of the most beautifully decorated fireplace you ever saw.

“The passages behind the other doors run to the upper floors of the north and south wings of the house.

“There are side connections to them all in the old part of the château. Of course, in the east and west wings, added years later, there are no secret passages nor sliding panels.”

“Which one leads to where the gold and jewels are kept?”

“I’ll show you in a little while, Billy.”

Henri pushed open the middle door of the row, and the boys had a whiff of musty tapestry and other shut-in odors which indicated that the passage had not been traveled for many a day.

Through the narrow way between the walls the boys walked, single file, leaving tracks in the dust and with many a sneeze and gasp.

At a point where the passage widened, Henri stopped and lifted a finger.

On the other side of the walls there was a sound of many voices, an occasional peal of laughter, the clink of glass against glass, and every now and then merry snatches of song.

Henri felt along the side of the passage until his fingers touched a little knob about level with his eyes.

With a slight pressure on the knob a panel on the other side was controlled and began to slide noiselessly in polished grooves to the left.

Henri held the movement to an inch.

“Cast your eye in there,” speaking softly to Billy.

CHAPTER XX.
BEHIND CHÂTEAU PANELS.

The state dining-hall of the château was serving as the breakfast room of a French general and his numerous staff. If the uniforms worn had not indicated to what nation these soldiers belonged, the proof was surely in the fact that they jested and sang before breakfast. It takes a gay lot to be jolly before breakfast. After dinner anybody might have the notion to be merry.

How Château Trouville had escaped destruction by the big guns of the Germans might be accounted for by the fact that the aforesaid big guns had been mostly employed, when not turned loose on the trenches, in silencing French barrier forts. As a German battery lieutenant remarked, “only forts really counted.”

However it was, this fine French country house had not even been scratched, as yet.

The chatter in the dining-hall was all Greek to Billy, though Henri and Reddy appeared to be much interested and amused by the lively conversation.

Reddy pointed out here and there a chasseur that he knew by name.

“What’s the matter with us having a little breakfast ourselves?” suggested Henri. There was plenty to eat in the knapsacks.

Billy and Reddy had no protest to make on this proposition, but they found it thirsty work to swallow camp rations without even a sup of liquid.

It so happened that a foot soldier serving as waiter passed close to the wall, carrying a flagon filled with water. At the moment everybody in the hall stood up in attitude of salute. The general was just coming in to breakfast. The soldier set the flagon down near the panel; Henri pressed the knob, making the opening wide enough for Reddy to poke an arm through, and quick as a flash that expert young gentleman yanked the prize through the crack, which was instantly closed by Henri.

The boys could not see what the soldier did when he discovered his loss, but they imagined that he must have been considerably surprised by the mysterious disappearance of the flagon.

The boys had not had a wink of sleep for more than twenty-four hours, and with all their walking and the heavy work they had done at “point of rocks” they were completely fagged.

“Oh, for a good soft place on which to stretch, and some air that is decent to breathe,” murmured Billy with nodding head.

“The surest thing I know,” was Henri’s encouraging words to the sleepy-head. “Come on, fellows.”

Further up the passage Henri pressed another knob in the wall, and the opening immediately created let in a veritable blaze of sunlight.

It was a small, narrow room on the other side of this panel, but spangled with mullioned or barred windows.

Off this room was another apartment, longer but no wider than the first. In this latter chamber stood a gilded bedstead under canopy.

“Here,” said Henri, “royalty was once upon a time concealed, when it was good for his princely health to be hidden.”

Billy was more intent on the project of testing the bed than listening to legends. He mussed up the rich covering to his liking and rolled like a log, clothes and all, into the broad expanse under the canopy. Henri and Reddy with no more ceremony followed suit, and the three went after the record of the famous Seven Sleepers.

It was early afternoon when a tremendous clatter of iron-shod hoofs in the stone courtyard far below roused Reddy, who always slept with one ear open.

With no effort to select a favorite, Reddy applied spanks right and left to his snoring companions.

“Who hit me?” demanded Billy in a dream voice.

“Where’s the trouble?” Henri was probing the covers in his haste to reach the inside works of an imaginary aëroplane motor.

Reddy dragged Henri out of bed by the heels, and in watching the wrestling match that followed Billy lost the desire to turn over for just one more nap.

“You fellows will insult the memory of his royal nibs if you don’t quit,” he growled.

“There’s evidently something doing below.”

Henri had shaken off the wiry Reddy and climbed upon one of the window ledges.

It was a cavalry movement, evidently, from the noise, and movement that indicated hurry orders.

“Perhaps the general won’t be back for dinner.”

The good sleep had put Billy back in his usual good humor.

“I don’t know what’s up,” admitted Henri, “but whatever it is I’m thinking that it’s time for us to get into action before the fighters go to pulling ears in this vicinity.”

“In other words,” said Billy, “it’s time for us to pull up the treasure and pull out.”

“That’s the ticket.”

Henri adjusted his knapsack, setting example for his comrades to get in marching order.

Passing out of the royal bed-chamber, the boys hastened again into the main passageway, going further north than they had yet been in their flittings through the concealed walks.

Henri finally stopped over a big brass plate set in the floor.

“It is not like moving that slab last night,” he commented, as the plate dropped with a snap on easy hinges by some combination which Henri well knew how to work.

A spiral staircase was revealed, and round and round and ever downward the boys proceeded.

At the foot of the staircase, at the end of a short passage, the trio were confronted by what was apparently a blank wall.

Henri counted to himself as he passed his hands over the face of the wall. When satisfied that his calculations were correct he called to Billy to give him a lift. Billy promptly furnished a pair of square shoulders, upon which Henri stood, after removing his shoes.

Henri tapped smartly at a selected spot, a hidden spring was released and a section of the wall fell away.

Once astride of the cross-piece upon which the moving section had rested, Henri lent Billy a helping hand, and Billy in turn gave Reddy, the lightweight, a stocky leg on which to climb.

The boys then dropped down on the other side.

They were in the treasure house of the Trouvilles!

CHAPTER XXI.
HENRI FINDS THE KEY.

The treasure house was a gloomy den of a place, one small, heavily grated window, with dusty diamond-shaped panes, set high and deeply in the wall, like a porthole, being the only means of producing light from the outside, and even that outside a dark little court enclosed by frowning walls.

In possession of the safety lanterns, the boys could be considered lucky, not only to enable them to quickly complete the task before them, but the three fire-balls helped wonderfully in relieving the impression of being locked up in a tomb.

In a far corner of this dungeon was an iron-bound, oaken box of considerable size, fastened by a heavy padlock. The discovery of the lock presented the first difficulty not described in the paper which Francois had given Henri.

Billy rattled the lock by a vicious jab with the heel of his shoe, but the effect on link and staple availed about as much as a feather in a gale. Nothing short of dynamite, or the right key, could pass that massive guard.

“Did you think of this?” Billy’s query deserved top line in the useless question column.

“If I had do you suppose I would be standing here like a hungry man before a baker’s window?”

Henri was completely bowled over, as the saying is, by this hitch in his plans, at the eleventh hour.

Reddy had just completed an unsuccessful assault on the obstinate padlock when Henri astonished his friends by doing some tango steps, setting a lively tune by snapping his fingers.

“Got it, now!” he exclaimed between shuffles. “Keep on your coats, fellows, I’ll be back in no time.”

With that the son of the Trouvilles jumped for the cross-piece in the movable wall section, drew himself up with the agility of a monkey and with equal celerity landed in the passage on the other side of the wall.

The minutes ticked away in Billy’s watch—ten—fifteen—twenty.

No sign of Henri.

“I can’t stand this much longer,” muttered Billy, never taking his eyes from the hole in the wall through which Henri had disappeared.

Reddy tried to tell Billy in French that he would go and hunt for Henri if he (Billy) would not mind.

Billy did mind. He understood Reddy’s gestures if he did not fully comprehend the language.

“When anybody goes it will be a procession, with me in the lead.”

He had hardly got this positive assertion out of his mouth when he heard something scraping in the passage, followed by the living picture of Henri framed in the opening above. Then the familiar voice:

“It’s all right, Buddy.”

“Just when I was thinking it was all wrong.”

Billy lifted his hands to ease Henri’s drop from the cross-piece, and gave him a bear hug when he landed.

Henri rapidly gave the reasons for his delay in getting back.

“You see, a flash of memory brought to my mind that mother kept the keys to about everything hanging behind a portrait of father in her bedroom. I had to go on the other side of the panel to get there—it’s in the new part of the house, you know.

“I did not see anybody about when I went through the fireplace into the dining-hall. You can wager, though, that I did not lose any time in dodging through the door to the corridor that would take me quickest to the place for which I was bound.

“I got there, all right; found the keys”—holding up the jingling bunch dangling from a wire hoop—“and was making my grand get-away on the return trip. As a matter of caution I peeped through the door of the dining-hall before I opened it very far. Lo and behold our friend from whom Reddy pilfered the flagon had seated himself at a table facing the door, through the crack of which I was straining my eyes.

“This fellow had a bottle of wine at his elbow, and a glass in his hand. He had settled for a good time, and I had settled for an uneasy one.

“Directly he arose and walked slowly toward the fireplace and curiously inspected it. Still wondering about that missing flagon, I guess. Then he continued his stroll to the window at the far end of the hall.

“‘This is the chance for me,’ I thought, and I bolted for the panel. What if it stuck or wouldn’t work? Believe me, it was a scary moment. Click, and I was through. I don’t know whether ‘red trousers’ saw me or just heard the click of the panel spring. At any rate, I stopped to listen a moment, and I heard him tapping here and there on the oak around the fireplace. That fellow is sure a suspicious customer.

“Well, here I am, and don’t let us waste any more time with this talkfest. Turn your lantern on the padlock, Reddy.”

Henri knelt before the treasure box, holding the jingling bunch of keys between his eyes and the blaze of Reddy’s lantern.

“That looks like it would fit,” selecting a short key of heavy turn.

“But it don’t.”

Henri made another selection, with no better success.

“Try that one,” Reddy pointing to a rusty instrument in the bunch.

Reddy had hit the nail on the head.

That key turned, and the padlock tumbled into Henri’s hand.

Then he lifted the lid of the treasure chest!

CHAPTER XXII.
THE FORTUNE OF THE TROUVILLES.

As the fire-balls flashed upon many velvet-lined trays displayed by the lifting of the lid, all the colors of the rainbow seemed to combine in the dazzling surface—the white glitter of diamonds, the violet-purple of amethysts, the blue of the sapphire, the crimson of the ruby, the deep rich green of the emerald, the changing tints of the opal—a very pool of gems shimmering under the eager gaze of the three boys.

“Carry me out of fairyland,” was Billy’s break of the silence that followed the first look into the chest.

Reddy was all eyes and no tongue, but Henri had to say something in his rôle of showman:

“Some rare stones there, eh? Many years’ gathering, too. This,” picking up a gold-threaded bracelet of diamonds and amethysts, “is said to have been a later gift to the house from the royal gentleman that beat us to the bed upstairs. Whole lot of history here,” lifting a handful of jewels and letting them fall again into their glittering bed, “but we’ll keep all that for the campfire, if we ever get back to it.

“Here’s some hard cash, by the way,” moving a jewel tray and pulling out a buckskin bag. “I am afraid,” added Henri regretfully, “that we can’t carry a whole lot of this in a single trip where we have to travel light.”

“We can make a noble try at it,” stoutly maintained Billy, who did not relish the idea of leaving anything in the chest.

Henri jerked loose the cord that closed the mouth of the bag and let the gold coins fall in a shining heap on the floor—a mixed collection of franc pieces of various values, of French minting; English sovereigns and the German mark.

This shower could have been repeated many times, for under the trays were long rows of the same kind of buckskin bags, with contents alike.

“Wish we had a tray.”

Billy realized that they had found more than they could carry.

“We will load first with the stones from the trays,” proposed Henri. “And then add all the cash we can.”

The boys proceeded to empty their knapsacks of the remains of the rations they carried, and by way of proper economy seated themselves on the stone floor for the purpose of stowing all the food they could inside them.

“I won’t be hungry again for a week, I’m sure,” asserted Billy, shaking the crumbs from his blouse.

“Then let’s to business,” briskly remarked Henri, as he engaged in the pleasing pastime of stuffing diamond ornaments into his knapsack. Billy and Reddy followed the leader in the jewel harvest, and all three of the knapsacks were soon filled to capacity and the straps carefully buckled.

That left only pockets, jacket lining and such space as could be used between clothing and skin for the coins.

“Remember, fellows,” advised Henri, “that we mustn’t anchor ourselves, for there is some lively effort ahead of us.”

Billy was compelled to acknowledge that he was loaded to the limit at that very moment, and Reddy certainly carried more weight in his clothes than he ever had before or ever did afterward.

Shutting down the lid of the chest with a bang, covering again the considerable amount of gold that the boys were compelled to leave, Henri was about to announce departure. An afterthought, however, induced him to lift the lid a second time. He removed the key of the padlock from the hoop and tossed the rest of the keys into the chest. Again closing the lid, he snapped the padlock in place and slipped the key into the band of his cap.

“Now we’re off.”

“S-sh!”

Billy turned the dark slide in his lantern. Henri and Reddy followed the cue.

Somebody or something was moving in the passage on the other side of the wall.

That somebody or something suffered a bump of some sort or other—a sound like the overturning of a chair.

Then a muttered oath in French. The somebody or something was human, and French.

The boys backed up into the darkest corner of the treasure house.

The grated window cast only a dim light into the room, but that line streaked straight across into the opening in the wall directly opposite.

The head and shoulders of a man appeared in the opening!

Even in the half-light Henri recognized the soldier who had lost the flagon and the suspicious tapper on the oak around the fireplace in the dining-hall.

From that panel in the dining-hall to the treasure house Henri, in his haste, had neglected to close the other slides, and even the plate over the stairway behind him.

He had carried a light chair from one of the upper chambers so that he could get back into the treasure house without a boost. It was over this that the trailing chasseur had stumbled, and which also gave the red-trousered sleuth the very clew he needed as to the whereabouts of the mysterious party who had taken the flagon from under his very heels.

Here was a pretty howdy-do for the boys. A soldier, and no doubt an armed soldier, between them and the carrying out of their cherished project.

There was only one way out of the sealed chamber, and that soldier was in it.

Could Reddy, the fox of the woods, suggest a trick that would win here?

CHAPTER XXIII.
TRAILED BY A CHASSEUR.

The soldier was evidently figuring in his mind as to what would be the next move on his part. Finding no sign of life in the place where he expected, no doubt, to lay a hand or an eye on the impertinent party that had stolen the flagon, the chasseur seemed to hesitate about dropping down into what must have appeared to him a dungeon, and risking the chance of a hidden enemy leaping upon him from some shadowy corner.

It apparently occurred to him that more light would clear the problem, for he drew himself up to a sitting position on the cross-piece, produced a match and scratched it across the sole of his shoe.

The tiny flicker did not give much satisfaction. The shadows were too deep for a little flame like that to penetrate them to any great distance.

The boys stood like statues, flat against the wall, on the same side, and some twenty feet from the opening where the soldier was wasting matches. The darkness hung about them like a pall.

It was one exciting moment when Billy had a sneeze coming on, and did not know whether or not he could conquer it. A sneeze just then would have settled the whole business.

But Billy did not sneeze; he nearly suffocated, though, by holding his cap so closely against his face.

The soldier had apparently exhausted his supply of matches, for the final scratch was accompanied by a grunt that sounded like sacres allumettes, blasted matches.

With that he swung himself down into the passage on the other side of the opening.

Billy, after a few minutes’ wait, made a move toward the opening.

Henri laid a restraining hand upon Billy’s arm.

“Wait a bit,” he whispered, “better let Reddy do his shadow act and find out where our friend in the red trousers has taken himself.”

Reddy instantly shifted his heavily laden knapsack from his shoulders, removed his gold-filled jacket, kicked off his shoes, and edged his way along the wall on tiptoes.

Under the opening he stood in listening attitude for several minutes; then, taking advantage of the rough stonework of the inside wall, he climbed like a squirrel to the cross-piece.

Cautiously poking his head through the opening, Reddy had another look and listened for his fellow countryman in uniform.

The soldier was nowhere to be seen—and Reddy could view the short passage as far as the foot of the spiral staircase, where the light came down from the open plate above.

Reddy lowered himself into the passage and cat-footed to the staircase, winding his way upward, every nerve on edge, and he ready for any emergency.

The soldier was not in evidence yet, but Reddy could now trace the chasseur by the marks on the dusty floor of the passage, for it was still light up here, though the sun, it could be seen through the panel opening in the royal bed chamber, was sinking, and evening was near.

With eyes to the floor and crouched like an Indian trailer, the boy noted that the chasseur had gone toward the panel opening into the dining-hall, at least the traces showed that the footmarks reversed themselves, retracing in the same direction. Reddy could distinguish the soldier’s tracks from those which he and his companions had made that morning, because the legging strap under the man’s shoes was clearly outlined in the dust.

Reddy, seeing that the coast was clear, for the time being, scooted back to where Henri and Billy were anxiously waiting and called them by name. Reddy’s knapsack, jacket, and shoes fell about him in the passage, speedily followed by the two boys. Henri stood on the chair and closed the wall section, which settled back without leaving a seam or mark on the wall surface.

“I’ll bet they won’t find that hole unless they batter down the whole wall,” was Henri’s comment.

The boys lost no time in getting upstairs and into the main passage, and there paused to give Henri a moment to figure the next move.

It was suddenly made manifest that at least one way was blocked, for loud voices rang out in the passage in the direction of the dining-hall.

The chasseur had gone for assistance to aid him in solving the puzzle that he had at first wanted to solve by himself.

Billy and Reddy thought that this time sure they were done for, but Henri was still in the reckoning. He was at home, and knew every crook and cranny in the maze of passages.

As the soldiers approached nearer and nearer, arguing in rapid-fire French as they came, Henri wheeled, slammed the bedroom panel into place, and hustling his companions into a run retreated up the passage to the north, stopping an instant to close the plate over the staircase.

“That fellow will have to do some tall explaining when he comes up with his crowd, for he won’t be able to show all that he may claim to have seen; that is, for a while, anyway.”

Henri was taking a positive dislike to the soldier who had proved such a bother at this critical period.

At the very end of the passage they were traversing arose a stained glass window of most exquisite design. On each side of the window the wainscoting was inlay work, model of ancient arts and crafts.

Henri used his hands on this surface as he would finger a checker or chess board. A large square swung open like a cupboard door and Henri motioned his comrades to pass through, and he, at their heels, closed the panel.

They stood in a narrow gallery, looking down into a chapel interior, most beautiful to behold. Hurrying along this gallery, the boys halted at a door heavily mounted with brass fittings. It was opened without effort and the boys found themselves at the head of another of those steep stairways, this one, however, running straight down—and a long way down.

It led to the crypt, or subterranean vault, under the chapel. Here the boys lighted their lanterns, at the suggestion of Henri. The latter shouldered a protruding stone in the wall of the cell and it gave way, disclosing of all the passages they had encountered in the house the most dismal and forbidding.

“Push in,” said Henri, “and we’re on the way to ‘Old Round Tower!’”

CHAPTER XXIV.
A RACE FOR LIFE.

“Gee! But isn’t this a jolly place, if you don’t care what you say.”

A rat almost as big as a small rabbit had made a dash over Billy’s feet. He also had just dodged a bat that had flapped straight at his head.

“You’re a good way underground, my boy,” said Henri, “and I guess it’s been many a day since anybody hit this trail. It is called ‘Monk’s Walk.’ Jules, Francois and myself explored this passage one day when we didn’t have anything else to do, but had no desire to do it more than once. Our old butler, he was ninety when he died, showed us how to get in here, and he had a long story to tell about a hair-raising happening here a century ago. But that’s another thing that will keep for the campfire.”

The journey through this rat and bat infested passage seemed an age in the making. The floor was damp and slippery and each of the boys had a fall, but, happily, without injury.

It was really less than half an hour that was consumed in going from the crypt of the chapel to the door opening into “Old Round Tower,” but Billy declared that he was much older when he got there than when he started.

“‘It’s dead for sleep I am,’ as Mike said,” further declared the boy from Bangor, “and I’ll bet it’s past midnight this very minute. Twenty minutes of, anyhow,” looking at his watch. “And hasn’t this been a day and a half for full measure? Something doing every minute.”

Reddy felt the same way, but there was no use telling Billy so, because Billy did not take kindly to the French language.

Henri himself, if the truth be known, was fighting to keep his eyes open.

So on the bottom floor of “Old Round Tower” the boys stretched themselves, and with knapsack pillows as hard as the floor itself they dozed into uneasy slumber, which lasted until the dawn of a new day.

The sleepers were startled by the roar of cannon. Not that the roar of cannon was unusual to these now veterans in the ways of war, but the booming seemed particularly close this morning, and in a locality that had, as stated before in this chronicle, heretofore escaped shelling.

“I thought that French general had gone to seek trouble when the whole push galloped away yesterday,” was Billy’s first after-waking remark.

“Pity they hadn’t taken that dining-hall chasseur with them.”

Henri in this moment of alarm, had a thought for the busybody who had tracked them from pillar to post a few hours ago.

A shell landed with tremendous explosion in the courtyard of the château; another, and another, until the whole place was shaken in every foundation, the air was aflame with the shrieking projectiles, and crash after crash made a din that was deafening.

“Us for the tunnel!” cried Henri, as a round-shot clipped the side of the tower above them and sent down a hail of stone chips.

The boys got out from under that tower in a hurry, and fortunate for them that they did. Two or three minutes later the whole structure collapsed under the terrific impact of the shelling.

When the trio ran through the tunnel door, it was sealed behind them by tons of riven stone.

Pale to the lips and trembling as if with acute ague, the boys weakly stumbled down the tunnel’s descending course.

The earth above and about them quaked and shivered as the storm of powder and lead raged outside.

The same powerful engines of destruction that had blasted and silenced the French barrier forts had been turned on the château and its surroundings. Such buildings were as paper before this cannonading.

The walls of the tunnel were holding as far as the boys had proceeded. But they had yet to traverse the line in low ground, where they had noted, in coming, the sagging roof and leaning walls, which even then had almost choked up the passage.

With these conditions made worse by the artillery shake-up, it would be a close call if the boys escaped burial alive. There was no way out at the rear.

A shut off ahead—and that would be the end.

But for the lanterns it is doubtful if the boys could have refrained from running wild, and dashing into obstructions without care or reason.

They at least did not have the added horror of total darkness with which to contend.

As the descent grew sharper so grew the nerve strain of the travelers.

They passed the first point of danger on hands and knees. Between the roof and the floor there was the scant margin of three feet.

At the next the barrier presented an even tighter squeeze.

Then a clearer way for ten or fifteen yards.

Here it was that the lantern shafts of light ahead showed in one appalling instant a shifting of earth; first dust, then clods and small stones.

The passage was closing in!

The boys stood for a second as if petrified in their tracks.

Pour vos vies, courez! (for your lives, run!)

Reddy’s shrill voice broke the spell, and the three dashed for the fast closing aperture. Billy, in the lead, essayed to step aside and let the others get through first, but Henri countered the movement with a violent push against the back of his friend and a reach for Reddy’s neck—the one boy he pushed through and the other he dragged, himself falling, full length, on his face, but safe on the other side of the death trap!

None too soon, for Henri’s legs were powdered with the dust from the earth mass that had fallen in a lump just behind him!

“Glory be!”

Billy said it with more fervency than ever before.

“Glory be!”

He said it again with grateful heart.

They were on the gradual ascent, and finally rested under the slab that would let them out into the free air.

No matter what they might be called upon to face there—it would be in the open.

Glory be!

CHAPTER XXV.
THE SERGEANT TO THE RESCUE.

“There’s nothing to do but lie here until nightfall,” said Henri. “A try for camp now would be almost a sure shot that we would be gobbled up. They’re fighting all around us.”

“Held up, you mean, don’t you?”

Billy could see only one fate for walking jewelry shops.

Reddy was in favor of a night move. He favored darkness for this kind of adventure, except in tunnels. He told Henri that if given half a chance he (Reddy) could get them back to their friends with the same ease that he had conducted the excursion to the mouth of the tunnel.

“Billy mustn’t step on any sticks, though,” he added with a twinkle in his eye.

Billy knew that his name had mixed in the conversation, but he was not sure just what the little Frenchman was joking about. Besides, he was too thirsty to care.

“My throat is as dry as a bone,” he complained.

“I’m a little husky myself,” admitted Henri, “and wouldn’t mind spending a few franc pieces for a pitcher of lemonade”—jingling the gold in his pockets.

“That reminds me,” he continued, “that I’m thinking that it would be a good plan to bury this stuff right where we are. There is no telling what kind of a chase we will have getting back to camp, and it would be rough luck to chance losing that for which we have risked so much.”

“But that means another trip here,” argued Billy, “and it’s me for one with no wish to haunt this territory.”

Reddy turned a torrent of French loose on Henri.

“He says,” Henri translating to Billy, “that to-night he will take to the woods alone, reach Colonel Bainbridge and tell him of our troubles, and it may be that sufficient force could be sent to pull us lambkins and the treasure out of the hole.”

“Bet the colonel will do it!”

Billy enthusiastically approved the scheme.

“Come to think of it, though,” he amended, “if it isn’t unfair to Reddy I think it is a great idea.”

“Don’t you worry about Reddy,” assured Henri, “he is better off around here without us than we would be without him.”

“Then the only thing on my mind now is one big drink of cold water.” Billy drew a long breath at the thought.

Our Young Aeroplane Scouts in France and Belgium / Or, Saving the Fortunes of the Trouvilles

Transcriber’s Notes:

Our Young Aeroplane ScoutsIn France and BelgiumORSaving the Fortunes of the Trouvilles

CHAPTER I.THRILLING VOYAGE IN A SEA-PLANE.

CHAPTER II.A LOOK BACKWARD.

CHAPTER III.FAREWELL TO THE FACTORY.

CHAPTER IV.DRAGGED BY A ZEPPELIN.

CHAPTER V.RAN AWAY WITH AN AUTOMOBILE.

CHAPTER VI.DEATH RIDE OF AN AVIATOR.

CHAPTER VII.ALONE ON A STRANGE COAST.

CHAPTER VIII.ONE DARK NIGHT IN YPRES.

CHAPTER IX.TESTING BILLY’S NERVE.

CHAPTER X.ON THE ROAD TO ROULERS.

CHAPTER XI.THEY MEET A GENERAL.

CHAPTER XII.WITH THE BRITISH ARMY.

CHAPTER XIII.THE BOYS UNDER FIRE.

CHAPTER XIV.IN AN ARMORED MOTOR CAR.

CHAPTER XV.FAREWELL TO FRANCOIS.

CHAPTER XVI.THE VALLEY OF THE MEUSE.

CHAPTER XVII.THE POINT OF ROCKS.

CHAPTER XVIII.AT THE MOUTH OF THE TUNNEL.

CHAPTER XIX.THROUGH THE SECRET PASSAGE.

CHAPTER XX.BEHIND CHÂTEAU PANELS.

CHAPTER XXI.HENRI FINDS THE KEY.

CHAPTER XXII.THE FORTUNE OF THE TROUVILLES.

CHAPTER XXIII.TRAILED BY A CHASSEUR.

CHAPTER XXIV.A RACE FOR LIFE.

CHAPTER XXV.THE SERGEANT TO THE RESCUE.

Our Young Aeroplane Scouts
In France and Belgium
OR
Saving the Fortunes of the Trouvilles

CHAPTER I.
THRILLING VOYAGE IN A SEA-PLANE.