CHAPTER X AN ADVENTURE IN THE ARDENNES

Both Ned and Buck were too busily engaged in getting the _Ocean Flyer_ out of range of the aerial guns to miss Alan for fully ten minutes. They shot the airship almost obliquely upwards over the city until the clouds shut off all sight of it from them and even the most daring of the pestering French aeroplanes could follow them no higher. Then Ned noticed for the first time that Alan had not returned to the pilot house.

“Is Alan down there in the engine room with you, Buck?” he called through the speaking tube.

“No. Good gracious! Isn’t he with you either?” exclaimed Buck anxiously. “Everything here seems to be running smoothly, so I’m going to risk leaving it a few minutes to look for him.”

It was not a hard matter to find Alan where he lay huddled up just inside the port door. With a cry of consternation Buck dropped upon his knees beside the silent figure, turned it over gently and was shocked to note the bloody ghastliness of his comrade’s face.

Severe newspaper training was strong in Buck Stewart though. He did not turn squeamish or raise Ned’s anxieties by shouting that Alan had been wounded. Ned needed his whole mind for the management of the Flyer, and Buck realized that.

Gathering the insensible boy up in his arms, Buck carried him into one of the small staterooms, hurriedly bathed his face in warm water, and was relieved to discover that what had at first appeared to be a mortal wound was merely an abrasion of the flesh where the Frenchman’s bullet had grazed its way. Alan revived a few minutes afterward, and while his legs were still a little shaky he protested that he felt quite his usual self.

After their hostile reception at Paris, the Airship Boys realized that it would be folly to attempt a similar daylight descent upon Muhlbruck, where Bob Russell was imprisoned. Also the appalling screech of bursting shells going past had given them a heartfelt disinclination to get the _Ocean Flyer_ anywhere between the lines of fire on the battle front.

Examination of a war map presented to them by the editor of the New York _Herald_ showed plainly that the nearest trenches of the opposing armies lay about forty miles to the northeast of Paris, extending thence in the form of a rough semicircle, indented towards the north, for a length of nearly two hundred miles. One end of this titanic battle front ended on the shores of the North Sea in Belgium; the other in French territory in the Meuse prefecture. In order to reach Muhlbruck it was necessary for the _Flyer_ to pass directly over the firing-lines somewhere in the Ardennes forest region, and then to proceed northerly, tending somewhat to the east until crossing the Belgian frontier, near which Muhlbruck is situated. The latest reports of the war showed the fiercest fighting just then to be going on far to the south along the river Meuse, and northwesterly along the Aisne, a few miles within French territory, where the Germans were making desperate daily assaults upon the allied French and English intrenchments. The severe guerrilla fighting which had nearly turned the Ardennes region into a shambles had then ceased almost entirely, while General von Kluck, commanding the German army of the west, was endeavoring to force the arms of his crescent battle line westward in around the Allied forces and by so doing compel them either to be surrounded and captured, or else to fall back upon Paris once more.

“It looks to me,” said Ned, outlining the positions on the map with one finger, “that it will be best for us to cross the firing line there in the Ardennes, flying high so as to be out of the range of those tremendous German field guns which they say can carry a cannon ball fifteen miles or more. If you boys think well of it, we might even drop the _Flyer_ in the Ardennes forest, get a chance to stretch the cramps out of our legs there, and still get to Muhlbruck long before dark.”

Both Alan and Buck approved heartily of this plan and so it was decided upon. Estimating the distance between their present position and the Ardennes by their maps and instruments, the _Ocean Flyer_ proceeded on its way, concealed from sight by the heavy cloud banks beneath. While the sun was still high, they saw that they had arrived somewhere in the neighborhood of the intended stopping-place. Ned then began planing as straight downwards as he dared and shortly afterwards shouted:

“There it is, boys! We figured the time and distance exactly. There are the tree-tops!”

Sure enough, there extended the green expanse of the great Ardennes wood, with the dull glint of the setting sun gilding the leaves and branches. Afar in the distance, a mere speck in the flame-colored sky, a solitary observation balloon was ascending. Somewhere away to the northwards the dull, monotonous booming of cannon could be heard like the rumble of distant thunder. The woods showed no signs of life; there were no spirals of smoke rising into the still evening air to warn the young aeronauts of near-by camp fires.

Sailing slowly over the tree-tops and gradually dropping lower and lower, the _Flyer_ finally came upon an open glade perhaps half a mile square and ideally located for a landing. Its only obstruction was a clump of maybe half a dozen ancient oaks standing almost in the middle of the area.

There Ned brought the big airship to earth as lightly as a bird, and the three boys jumped out to enjoy their first touch of Mother Earth since leaving New York nearly a day before. The air was mild and odoriferous with the smell of the forest and all took huge breaths of it gratefully. Buck pranced about like a colt let loose in pasture, and he and Alan ran short races up and down the glade to stretch their cramped muscles.

“Now, boys,” called Ned, “it is time that we held a serious council of war to decide just how we are going to manage Bob’s escape. Let’s sit down under these trees here and make final arrangements, because by midnight we’ll be at Muhlbruck and won’t want to waste any time in that dangerous vicinity.”

So they sat there under the biggest tree in the center of the field and talked things over.

Alan said: “I don’t see how we can decide upon any very definite plan until after we get there and find out the lie of the land. For all that we know, the prison where they have Bob locked up may be right in the center of the town with a couple thousand watchful soldiers around it. I don’t believe that we’ll ever be able to get near enough to the prison to get Bob out without some leg-work.”

“I’ve been thinking of that too,” said Ned, “and feel pretty sure that some one of us will have to go into town disguised to get exact information, while the other two of us remain to guard the _Flyer_ and be ready to lend assistance whenever we are called upon. The difficulty is to say which one of us ought to undertake the perilous mission of spy. You know if the Germans ever caught him he would be in an even worse fix than poor old Bob.”

“Let me go, Ned,” pleaded Alan, his face aglow with enthusiasm. “I’m perfectly willing to take the risk.”

“No, let me go,” said Buck. “Both of you boys are absolutely needed to manage the airship, and in a pinch can get along well enough without me. Besides that, I can speak German well enough to pass in the dark, and my newspaper work has given me more practical experience in the sleuthing line than either of you two have had.

“Personally I don’t think the chances are that I would run much danger of detection there in disguise after midnight, but, even if they do get suspicious, I could show them the war-correspondent’s credentials given you by the _Herald_. I don’t believe that even grouchy old General Haberkampf is crazy enough to risk getting the American press down on him by mistreatment of me should I have to shove those papers under his nose.”

“I think that you exaggerate the importance of the New York _Herald_ over here in the war zone,” said Alan with a smile. “Remember that the _Herald_ card didn’t prevent the Germans from throwing Bob into their beastly prison.”

“But that was quite a different case,” explained Buck. “Bob Russell was caught with certain papers on his person which are said to have branded him as a hostile spy.”

“However--” began Alan again.

Ned interrupted him.

“Buck is right, Alan,” said he. “I don’t like to think of his risking his life in this way, but he is clearly better fitted for the job than either you or I. I understand how disappointed you are in not getting the chance to risk it for good old Bob’s sake, and I’m just as sorry that I can’t do it. But Buck’s knowledge of the German language, his experience in this sort of thing, and the fact that he can the better bluff about being a regular newspaper correspondent, all make him the logical man for it. You and I will have to give in.”

Alan was very much disappointed that things turned out so and tossed back his head to conceal his chagrin. As he did so his eye caught sight of something strange in the bushy tree-top directly above their heads.

“Look, boys, isn’t that a little house up there?” he cried, pointing.

As he did so there came a chorus of guttural exclamations from the concealing leaves up above, and, before the startled Airship Boys had time to do more than scramble to their feet, at least a dozen shaggy-bearded German soldiers, in ragged, dirt-stained gray uniforms, came sliding one after another down the surrounding tree-trunks.

“Hands up!” roared one who seemed to be in command, and, even though he spoke in German, there was no mistaking the meaning of the musket barrels pointed threateningly at the three boys.