The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps Part 14

"Fine! And if I can't talk Belgian-French better than any German that ever lived I'll eat my helmet!"

So they took the cupboard door from its hinges, wrapped the body of the dead woman carefully in the tattered blankets from her bed, and laid it on the improvised stretcher.

"We should leave some sort of word as to what we are doing," said Bob.

"Suppose some of her folks come back and do not find any trace of her?

They might never know of her death."

"When we find a place to bury her we will find someone to whom we can tell her story, so much as we know of it," answered d.i.c.ky. "Perhaps we might even find a priest to help lay her away."

Thus, without definite plan except to beam their lifeless burden to some decent burial ground, the boys set out. They had not proceeded far along the lane that led away from the house when they heard voices.

They plodded on, and pa.s.sed a group of persons whom they took to be Germans from the deep gutturals in which they spoke. They were close to this group, too close for comfort, but pa.s.sed un.o.bserved in the gathering darkness.

For half an hour they bore the dead woman, pa.s.sing houses at times, shrouded invariably in darkness. At last they came to a town. German soldiers were in evidence there, in numbers, but took no notice of the two bent forms bearing the stretcher. Bob, who was leading, b.u.mped into a man in the dark.

"_Pardon_," said the man.

"_Pardon, monsieur_," replied Bob at once.

This was met with a soft-voiced a.s.surance, in French that it was of no consequence, the remark concluding with the words, "_mon fils_."

"Are you the Father?" Bob blurted out in English.

"Yes," came in low tones in return. "I am Pere Marquee, my son. Say no more. You may be overheard. Follow me."

Around a corner, down a lane went Pere Marquee, the boys following with their strange load. Once well clear of the main street, the Father stopped.

"Speak slowly," he said. "I understand your language but imperfectly, my son."

Whereupon Bob promptly told him, in few words, of their quest. He told him, too, that they were American aviators in imminent danger of capture.

"Bring the poor woman this way," said the priest. He led them to a house which he entered without knocking, and asked them to enter.

They took the dead woman into a room occupied by two old ladies, and set down their load as Pere Marquee hurriedly told the short story he had heard from Bob.

d.i.c.ky was nearest to the priest as he finished speaking and turned to the boys. The old man gave the young one a searching scrutiny, up to that time d.i.c.ky had not spoken.

"You, too, are American?" he asked, as if doubtful that so perfect a disguise could have been so hurriedly a.s.sumed.

d.i.c.ky's answer was short, and made in a tone and with an accent that made the good Father look still more sharply into the boy's eyes.

"No one would dream it," he murmured. "You are very like the poor dead woman's son---so like that the resemblance is startling. It is no doubt the clothes that make me note it."

"Not altogether," interposed one of the old ladies. "His voice is strangely like that of Franois. I know, for Francois frequently worked here for us until they took him away. If the American would limp as Franois limped, most folk would take him for Franois, surely."

Franois, it was explained, had been hurt when a boy of twelve, and while not seriously crippled, always walked with a slight limp in the right leg.

Once having convinced their new-found friends that they were American soldiers whose object it was to restore Belgium to the Belgians, they all set about the discussion of what should be the next step.

Pere Marquee had known the dead woman. She had been ill for weeks, and he had been expecting to hear she had pa.s.sed away. Too much was required of him in the village to allow of his leaving it to look after her.

The German colonel was not a hard man, "for a German," said the priest.

The soldiers molested but little the townsfolk that were left. After some discussion the Father decided that the best plan would be to have a funeral in the morning, attended by the two American boys openly. Both spoke French sufficiently well to answer any questioning by the Germans. d.i.c.ky's disguise was perfect, they all declared.

With the addition of the limp, which he decided to adopt, he might even fool some of the townsfolk. Before they lay down on the floor and s.n.a.t.c.hed some sleep Bob's wardrobe had been replenished with old clothes gathered from a house nearby.

Little interest was taken in the funeral next morning so far as the Germans were concerned. For that matter but few townsfolk attended the actual interment. Those who did were very old folk or very young. Not one of them spoke to either Bob or d.i.c.ky. The whole affair seemed uncanny to the boys. Bob stooped as he walked at the suggestion of the priest, and d.i.c.ky's limp was very naturally a.s.sumed.

No sharp scrutiny was given them, though each was bathed in perspiration when they regained the shelter of the house where they had spent the night.

"Not a moment must now be lost," said Pre Marquee. "You must get as far away from this village as possible without delay. Your presence here will lead to inquiry before many hours have pa.s.sed, and subsequent registration. If that comes, you would be shot as spies without doubt, sooner or later. I advised that you take the chance of discovery at the funeral so that we could say that you came from a nearby town for that ceremony and had at once returned. Be sure that I shall select a town in the opposite direction to that in which you will be working your way. I am sure that the end justifies the means, and I wish you G.o.dspeed."

Ten minutes later the two boys slipped out the rear door of the house. d.i.c.ky was soon limping through the trees of a thickly-foliaged orchard, Bob close behind. Stooping under the low branches, step by step they advanced. No one was in sight. A last glance behind and the boys ducked through the leafy hedge, wriggled over a low wall, and rolled into a deep ditch beside it. Stooping as low as they could, the boys followed this ditch for some hundreds of yards, until they were well clear of the town, and out of sight of anyone in it.

Finally they reached a spot which seemed particularly well suited for a hiding place, and decided to remain there until dark before attempting to proceed further. All the rest of the day they lay in the moist, muddy ditch-bottom. Bob had torn a map from the back of an old railway guide he had seen in the house in which he had slept, and it was to prove of inestimable value to him. To strike north, edging west, and reach one of the larger Belgian towns was the first plan. What they should do once they had accomplished that, time must tell them. So far they had been blessed by the best of fortune, and the part of the country in which they had descended did not seem to hold very many German troops. Even Bob began to hope.

CHAPTER XI

THROUGH THE LINES

It was stiff, tiresome work lying quiet in the ditch that day, but with brambles pulled over them the boys were in comparatively little danger of discovery. At dusk they crawled cautiously out of their hiding-place and slowly headed northward. Every sound meant Germans to them, and their first mile was a succession of sallies forward, interspersed with sudden dives underneath the hedge by the roadside.

The moon came up. The clank of harness and the gear of guns and wagons told of approaching artillery or transport, or both. From the shelter of the hedge the boys watched long lines of dusty shapes move slowly past. They seemed to be taking an interminable time about it. Now and then a rough guttural voice rasped out an order.

The boys waited for what seemed hours to them, and the very moment they would move, along would come another contingent of some sort.

They had evidently struck a corps s.h.i.+fting southward. At last a good sized gap in the long, ghostly line gave them courage to cross. They got through safely enough, and kept on steadily for a time across country. They skirted two villages, and reached a haystack near a river-bank before daybreak. Out toward the east they saw the faint outlines of a fairly large town. Before them lay the river, spanned by a bridge guarded at each end by a German sentry. Hope fell several degrees.

The boys had climbed upon the stack and pulled the straw well over them. As they lay looking toward their goal, to the north, the home of the owner of the stack was at their backs. He made his appearance at an early hour, and came not far distant. After a whispered conference, Bob hailed him in a low tone. First the little man bolted back into his house without investigating the whereabouts of the mysterious voice. After a time he reappeared, and when Bob again sung out to him, he gingerly approached the stack, staring at it like mad, in spite of Bob's continuous warnings that he should not do so. Finally Bob induced him to mount the slight ladder by which the boys had climbed to their point of vantage.

He was a little man, with a thin red beard, great rings in his ears, and piercing, s.h.i.+fty eyes. A reddish, diminutive sort of man, altogether, with a thin little voice that went with his general appearance. He was literally scared stiff at the idea of the Boches finding the boys on his premises. That would mean his house burned, and death for himself, he said. Germans were all about, he said fearfully, and no one could escape them. He was so frankly nervous and so devoutly wishful that the boys had never come near him and his, that Bob, to ease the little man's mind, promised that the boys would swim the river when dark came and relieve the tension so far as the stack-owner was concerned. He was eager enough to see that the boys were well hidden, and before he climbed down the ladder he piled bundle after bundle upon them, as if preferring that they should be smothered rather than discovered by the dreaded Boches.

That was a tiring day, a hungry, thirsty day, but the boys lay as still as mice. From where they lay they could see a sufficient number of Germans pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing along the road and across the bridge to hourly remind them of the necessity of keeping close cover.

At night, before nine o'clock, they climbed down from their hiding-place, went to the edge of the river, undressed, and waded out neck-deep.

d.i.c.ky stepped on a stone that rolled over and in righting himself splashed about once or twice. In a moment a deep voice could be heard from the opposite bank, growling out, _"Was ist das?"_ The boys kept perfectly still, and heard the German call out for someone to come. Quietly each of the boys ducked his head and gently waded back under water to the shelter of their own bank. There they sat, very cold and miserable, for some time. Then the moon came out and lit up the country-side bright as day.

"It's off for to-night," whispered Bob. "We must go back and have another try to-morrow night. That was bad luck. The Boche could hardly have been a sentry. I think he was just there by chance.

What rotten luck!" So back they went, wet and cold, to their nest at the top of the stack, in anything but a hopeful frame of mind.

They fell into a sound sleep before long, and were awakened quite early next morning by the weight of someone ascending the ladder.

"A Boche this time!" whispered d.i.c.ky as he regained consciousness.

"That light little man never could make such a commotion."

The perspiration broke out on Bob's forehead.

An age seemed to pa.s.s before the head of the intruder came into view. What was their surprise and relief to see the round smiling face of a Belgian woman of considerable size and weight! Redbeard had told her of his unwelcome guests and she had come to offer such succor and a.s.sistance as might lie in her power.

She was the widow of a Belgian officer, killed in the first fighting of the war. She asked if the boys were hungry, and when Bob admitted that they had been on very short rations indeed for some time she reached down and drew up a little basket containing a bottle of red wine and a plate of beans.

The Germans had taken most of the food in the district, and beans were her only diet save on those occasions when she managed to get some of the American relief food which a friend of hers had hidden away, drawing sparingly on the rapidly diminis.h.i.+ng store.