CHAPTER XVI

THE AIRSHIP RAID

The signs multiplied now that they were approaching the battle lines. Apart from the ominous roar which had now become unceasing, war showed its grim face on every hand.

They dashed through "rest billets"--the towns behind the lines where the exhausted soldiers, who had served their term in the trenches, were sent back for a few days or weeks of rest while fresh troops took their places.

The roads became more congested with trucks carrying supplies and ammunition to the front. Ambulances came past in an endless stream, bearing their quota of wounded men. Hospitals were everywhere, marked with a Red Cross that bespoke their mission of mercy and healing.

And there were cemeteries too, with their endless rows of simple wooden crosses on which were inscribed the names and regimental numbers of those who slept beneath.

Cripples, too, there were, with missing legs or arms, and blinded ones, who had looked for the last time on scenes of warfare.

It was the seamy side of war that thrust itself upon their sight. But though it sobered, it did not daunt these eager young Americans who had come to do their part and "see it through." It only deepened their indignation at the merciless military power that had brought such woe and misery upon the world, and each breathed a vow to himself that he would not rest until that power was curbed and punished as it deserved to be.

"This looks like the real thing," remarked Frank.

"That's what!" agreed Bart. "You can see already that war is what Sherman said it was."

"This is nothing," put in Billy. "It's only the fringe. It's only when we get in the trenches that we'll know anything about it."

"Some of us may not know much then," put in Tom. "It all depends on how long we succeed in dodging the bullets."

"Yes," observed Billy. "Or our experience may be like that of the Tommy who said 'First, I 'ears a 'orrible noise and the next thing I 'ears the nurse sayin', "Sit up and drink this!"'"

There was a laugh that broke the tension, and before long they reached the district that had been chosen for their intensive training.

It was a wide stretch of rolling country several miles in extent, and it had been chosen because it resembled in its main features the actual territory where the fight was going on.

There were brooks and hills, valleys and quarries, woods and meadowlands with a few small hamlets of scattered houses.

There were no spacious barracks such as they had been used to in the cantonments at home. The troops were quartered here and there as opportunity offered.

Thousands of dog tents had been erected on the level places and in these the majority of the men were sheltered.

Every cottage and chateau also had its quota, and farmhouses with their outlying barns and stables were utilized to the utmost.

"Hope they don't separate us, fellows," said Frank, as he watched the corporals and sergeants picking out various squads and assigning them their billets.

"Gee, so do I," echoed Bart. "The old bunch has been together ever since we left Camport and I have a hunch our luck's going to continue."

The "hunch" proved to have a solid foundation, for the four army boys were all sent off together with about forty more of their comrades to an old mill that stood near the edge of the camp.

It was a low, rambling structure with plenty of windows that gave it ample light and an air of homely comfort that delighted the young soldiers.

"This is what I call luck," chortled Tom, as he looked about him and glanced up at the well-thatched roof that seemed rain-proof.

"It beats a dog tent by a thousand miles," returned Billy.

"It doesn't matter so much while the weather's still warm," said Bart, "but oh, boy! when the winter comes, maybe it won't be good to have a snug roof like this over our heads."

A little cottage adjoining the mill served as a mess hall for the squad billeted there and the presiding genius of the place was a French cook, who had as his assistant a young Irish lad whose most prominent points were a shock of red hair and a mischievous disposition.

"Anatole is a good chef, all right," Frank remarked one day, shortly after they had had a most appetizing meal. "He may have his faults and probably does, but he cooks to beat the band."

"Yes," agreed Bart, "he's a dandy cook but he's got a hair-trigger temper. I've heard him bawling out his helper in all the French epithets there are, and that's quite a few apparently."

"Righto!" laughed Frank. "There's a big lot of them and Anatole knows them all. He could give points to the driver of a team of army mules. You've got to hand it to him for being thorough anyway. Without that outlet he'd probably go crazy."

"Possibly," assented Bart. "There's no telling. But listen. 'Speak of the cook and you'll hear him shouting' or words to that effect. Great Scott! He's mad for fair this time."

"You've said it!" ejaculated Frank. "He's about as angry as it's possible for a Frenchman to be--and that's going some."

Fate had willed that that day the Irish helper in a spirit of impish perversity should have annoyed the cook in various covert and ingenious ways until the latter's irritation broke all bounds.

The cottage door flew open and the boy bounced out, about two jumps ahead of the cook whose face was crimson and eyes bulging.

"Pat has an air of haste about him," remarked Frank with a grin.

"He'd better have," laughed Bart. "Anatole is up in the air for fair."

"Leetle rat zat you air!" shouted the enraged cook, shaking a ladle furiously at his helper who stood at a safe distance wearing a tantalizing grin. "Sacre! but you drive me cr-r-r-azy weet your seely tricks. You air one Irish monkey, zat ees what you air! Ef I get hol' of you--ah, you weel not forget eet soon, I tell you zat!" and he made a clumsy rush for the boy who easily dodged around a corner of the cottage. The cook raced after him and the pair made several circuits of the little building, although it was evident that the cook had absolutely no chance of catching his agile tormentor.

They made a highly ludicrous sight, and Frank and Bart, who happened to be the only spectators of the scene, roared with laughter, stamping about and hammering each other on the shoulder in the excess of their merriment.

But the cook was not long in discovering the futility of his efforts and gave up the chase, puffing and blowing like a grampus. His wrath had in nowise abated however, and he shook his fist impotently at the boy, who by his very silence and the ease with which he eluded him drove the unfortunate chef into a very paroxysm of fury.

"_Mille tonnerres!_" he shouted, and hurled the heavy ladle he had been carrying straight at his assistant's head. But the lad ducked in time, and the heavy missile went whistling past him and found lodgment in the underbrush beyond.

"Better luck nixt toime," jeered the imp. "Try agin, why don't ye? Ye've got plinty uv thim ladles left. 'Tis the bist uv exercise, throwin' thim things is."

Frank and Bart shouted afresh, while the outraged cook tore his hair in desperation and gave vent to a stream of epithets. The boy said nothing, but put his hand to his ear and affected to listen in a manner far more irritating than words could possibly have been.

The cook's face grew more crimson than before and his naturally protruding eyes seemed about to leave their sockets. He danced wildly about, shaking his clenched fists madly in the air. At last however, just when he seemed threatened with a stroke of apoplexy, he stopped from sheer exhaustion and for the first time became conscious of the presence of Frank and Bart who were leaning on each other for support, convulsed with laughter and the tears streaming from their eyes.

He glared malevolently at them for a few moments but finding that this had little effect at last turned and went into the cottage still muttering imprecations on the head of his assistant.

"Help, help!" gasped Frank. "Hold me up, Bart, or I'll go down. My, but that was rich."

"All of that," agreed Bart, wiping the tears from his eyes. "If we'd only had a moving picture machine and a phonograph handy to take down that scene. It would be the biggest hit of the age."

"It would have meant oodles of coin and no mistake," assented Bart. "We'd have been beyond the reach of want for the rest of our natural lives."

"Anatole's got a circus clown beaten by a thousand miles," replied Frank. "It's too bad that the rest of the fellows couldn't have been here to see the circus. But I suppose it's ungrateful to criticize fate after she's been so kind to us."

"I should say so," chuckled Bart. "If I live to be a hundred years old, I never expect to see anything funnier," and at the remembrance of the comical scene he started laughing afresh with his hand pressed against his side.

"Just the same," said Frank, when they had at last quieted down, "I wouldn't like to be in that red-headed helper's shoes. He's got to go into the cottage soon, and when he does I have a hunch that something will happen to him."

"I think it's extremely likely," agreed Bart, "and I can't say but what he deserves it. It seems to me that Anatole has something coming to him in the way of revenge."

It was with considerable amusement that the two chums watched the actions of the Irish lad. For some time he kept clear of the cottage, but then the door opened and the cook's head appeared in the doorway.

"Come here, you Mickey!" he called, in tones meant to be reassuring, "and peel ze potatoes."

With a good deal of caution the boy reluctantly approached, but stopped just out of the cook's reach for a parley.

"Wot ye goin' ter do wit' me whin ye git holt uv me?" he queried. "I wuz only foolin' wit' ye before. Can't ye take a little joke?"

"Nevaire mind," replied the cook realizing his advantage. "Come an' get beezy, else I tell ze captain you air--wat you call eet?--inzubordinate. Zen he make you come."

The boy glanced desperately around in search of some way of escape from his predicament, but finding none finally went reluctantly into the cottage.

"Here's where retribution falls on him," said Frank with a grin.

He was not mistaken, for the boy had scarcely entered when there issued forth the sound of several lusty smacks. Then came a high-pitched scolding which showed that Anatole had had recourse to moral as well as physical suasion.

"I don't know but what I'd rather have the licking than the scolding," chuckled Bart as they listened to the voluble eloquence of the chef.

"Either one's bad enough," laughed Frank. "I guess our young red-headed friend has got all that was coming to him."

Now the intensive training of the boys began in earnest. And training now had a meaning that it had never had while they were still on American soil.

For at that time they had not fully grasped the fact that they were actually at war. There had been a certain dream-like quality about it that had been like a scene from a play.

The only cannon they had heard were those fired in salute or at practice. The zip of a bullet had only meant that that bullet was speeding toward a wooden target.

But now the roar of cannon, multiplied a thousand fold above everything they had heard before, meant that deadly missiles were seeking out human life in an effort to maim and destroy.

And soon--how soon they did not know, but still soon--they themselves would be the target for whining bullets and shrieking shells.

Practice now meant something. Expertness might mean the difference between saving life or losing it. A new spirit ran through the men like an electric current. No need now for their officers to urge them on. If anything, they had to hold the young soldiers back, lest they burn up their vitality and exhaust their strength before they were put to the final test.

As far as possible, the camp became a mimic battlefield. Trenches were dug, precisely like those that they would soon be holding against the attacks of the enemy.

Barbed wire fences were built by one regiment and cut through and beaten down by another, which, for the time being, was chosen to play the part of the enemy.

The bayonet practice was no longer against dummies but against a picked squad of their own comrades. And each side in these mimic battles was so eager to win that at times they almost forgot themselves, with slight wounds and bruises as a result before their officers could intervene.

"We're getting there, Bart!" cried Frank, as he wiped the perspiration from his brow, after a particularly strenuous encounter. "I'd back our boys right now to hold their own against any bunch of equal size that the Boches can send against them."

"We sure are doing dandy work," assented Bart. "I wonder when they're going to put us on the firing line?"

"Before long I hope," chimed in Tom. "I'm aching to get a whack at them. It's the only way I can let off steam," he added, ruefully. "I came near running one of the boys through with my bayonet to-day."

"I wonder where they'll put us," conjectured Billy. "I suppose they'll sandwich us in with some of the French troops for a while until we get our bearings."

"Maybe," said Frank. "But I'd like better to have us fellows take up some sector and hold it all by ourselves. The tri-color's a fine flag, but when I fire my first bullet at a Hun I want to be under the Stars and Stripes."

"You've said it!" declared Tom.

"You fellows are regular fire-eaters," laughed Dick Lever, a young fellow with whom the boys had struck up a friendship.

He wore an aviator's uniform and was a fine type of young American. He was one of those who, on seeing war impending, had not waited for the formal declaration, but, at their own expense, had sailed to the old country to help France and, so doing, the United States.

Bronzed, upstanding, clear-eyed, he had succeeded in making the army boys like him immensely and had imparted to them many useful and interesting stories of modern warfare.

"You're a good one to talk," said Billy. "When it comes to fire eating, you aren't so slow yourself. I heard from one of the fellows yesterday what you did at the battle of the Somme."

Dick blushed like a girl.

"That was nothing," he protested. "Just part of the day's work."

"What's the dope?" asked Tom with interest. "I haven't heard the story, and from the beginning, it ought to be good."

"Will Scott was telling me about it," said Billy. "He says that Dick here went over the German lines and started a little war all by himself. He flew low near the ground, letting loose his machine gun at a whole regiment of German soldiers just forming up for action. Went along a little further and lambasted a bunch of German officers in an automobile, killed two of them and made the others jump out and hide under the machine. Then came back and, just for good measure, let fly his machine gun at the same regiment he'd soaked going out. After that I guess he knocked off and called it a day's work.

"That's why he wears that decoration," he added, pointing to the cross on Dick's jacket.

"See him blush," chaffed Tom. "It's funny how these fellows that can face any number of bullets, turn coward when it comes to praise. You'd almost think we were accusing him of a crime."

"Any other of the boys would have done the same if he had had my chance," said Dick. "Sometimes I go days at a time without having a chance for a scrap. That just happened to be my lucky day."

"The Huns didn't call it that," laughed Frank.

Dick who, as a matter of custom, had been scanning the sky, uttered a sharp exclamation.

"Here's another bit of luck, fellows, perhaps," he cried, and without further farewell, was off like a shot toward his machine, which had been waiting, with his mechanic to guard it, a hundred yards away.

High up in the sky appeared a squadron of airships that by their markings and designs the boys recognized as enemy planes. They were evidently bent on adventure and had come much further beyond the lines than usual.

The French were quick to accept the challenge and the anti-aircraft guns got into action at once. Puffs of shrapnel burst like white clouds in and about the marauding planes.

Even as the boys watched, one missile found its mark, and the plane, out of control, whirled round and round and then fell swiftly to the ground within the French lines.

But not with guns alone did the Allies respond. Like a flock of falcons, a squadron of French aeroplanes shot swiftly up into the air, climbing, climbing in the effort for altitude, so that they might swoop down upon their prey from above.

"There goes Dick's plane in the van!" cried Frank, his voice tense with excitement.

"That's the place for America!" exclaimed Tom. "Always in the van!"