CHAPTER XXXII.

THE LONG NIGHT.

Then followed the blackest hours of Jack's life. Outside the sentries kept up their eternal pacing. In the distance a dog barked, and there was still scattered firing. For a long time the unfortunate young wireless man sat huddled on the floor of his prison in a sort of torpor.

All at once he recollected that one of his guards spoke English. Perhaps he could get the loan of pen or pencil and paper to write some last words. But when hammering at the door for some moments brought a response, his request was gruffly refused. The sentry resumed his measured pacing.

One--two! One--two! Hour after hour the sound beat into Jack's brain till he thought his head would burst.

Then came another sound.

The sound of digging! The blows of a mattock!

A cold perspiration broke out on Jack's forehead as he realized the import of this. They were digging his grave, and by a refinement of cruelty, within earshot of his prison place. Whether by accident or design, poor Jack was being forced to hearken to the most grisly of the preparations for the next morning's reveille.

So the hours crept by leaden-footed. Sleep was out of the question as much as was possibility of escape. The sound of the digging, which Jack had stopped his ears to keep out, had ceased.

Then came a sudden stir outside. The sound of hurrying feet and commands barked in sharp, quick voices. Jack's heart gave a bound.

Could it be a detachment of Belgians summoned by Tom and Bill coming to wipe out the small force occupying the farm?

He flung himself against the door of the smoke house, listening intently. There was a tiny crack at one of the posts and through this he could command a limited view of the moonlit farmyard. Then came an odd sound. Like the dry whirring of insects in the fall. It grew in volume. The hurrying and the shouts increased, too. Shots were heard, scattering one after the other and a yell that sounded like a shout of warning.

Then the world rocked and spurted flame. Screams and groans filled the air.

Again there came an explosion that shattered the night and sickened the senses. Jack, half stunned, fell to the floor of the smoke house as part of its roof was torn off.

Then came silence, broken an instant afterward by groans and moans and swift, alarmed orders. There was a rat-a-plan of hoofs. The queer whirring sound died out. Only the moans still continued. Dizzy and sick, Jack got to his feet.

As yet he could not quite realize what had happened. Suddenly followed realization.

A night raiding aircraft had spied the shifting lights of the encampment and, by the moonlight, caught the gleam of stacked arms, and had struck.

The sound of the sentries' ceaseless pacing had stopped. Jack shouted and pounded on the door of the partially wrecked smoke house, but there was no answer but the moans and cries that were now getting fainter and less frequent. The sides of the smoke house were of rough logs and without much difficulty Jack clambered to the shattered roof.

He raised himself and clambering over, gave a hasty glance about him. It was a terrible scene of wreckage that he surveyed. In the earth two immense holes, big enough to bury two horses, had been torn, and close by lay two men. Over toward the house was a third figure stretched out. Three horses, one of which died as Jack was looking over the carnage, lay not far off.

There was nobody else in sight.

Jack clambered over the edge of the gap the shell had torn in the roof and dropped lightly to the ground.

"Wasser!" moaned one of the wounded men, whom Jack recognized as one of his guards. The boy sped to the well and hastened back with the big earthen pitcher from which they had refreshed themselves earlier that day.

But he was too late. Even as the boy held the cooling draught to the sentry's lips, the man died. The other was already dead when the boy dropped to the ground, his body frightfully shattered by the aerial bomb.

There was still the third man lying by the house and Jack, thinking he might be able to minister to him, hurried over. But here, too, the bomb had struck fatally.

A shaft of moonlight fell through the poplars and illumined the man's face. It was Radwig, struck down in death even as he had planned a cruel revenge for another. Jack covered the dead professor's face with the man's huge blue cloak and then stood silent for a moment. The rapidity with which it had all happened almost stunned him.

Fifteen minutes before he had been a prisoner with the hideous sounds of spade and mattock in his ears. Now he was, by nothing short of a miracle, free again. He raised his face to the sky and his lips moved silently. Then, with a last look about the place, he prepared to leave, fervently hoping that before another day had passed he would be with his friends once more in Louvain.

All at once he heard a loud whinny. One of the dead troopers' horses had been left behind in the mad flight from the farmhouse. It was saddled and bridled, although the girth had been loosened. Jack untied it, tightened the girths, and mounted. He did not know much about riding, but somehow he managed to stick to the animal's back as he directed it down the road.

Every now and then he drew rein and listened. He had no desire to encounter prowling bands of Uhlans or to run into the small force that had evacuated the farmhouse, no doubt believing him to be dead. But dawn broke while he was still traveling, not at all certain that he was going in the right direction.

Jack decided to abandon his mount. Taking off its bridle so that it could find forage along the roadside, he patted its neck and said:

"Thanks for the ride, old fellow."

Then bareheaded, and tired almost to exhaustion by all he had gone through, yet driven on by dire necessity of reaching the Belgian lines, the lad struck off across a wheat field into a path of woodland. On the edge of the field he shrank suddenly back into the tall wheat. There lay a man's coat, a stone jug and a basket. No doubt the man was close at hand. But although he crouched there for a long time, nobody came, nor was there any sound of human life. Birds twittered and once a rabbit cocked an inquisitive eye at the lad as he lay crouched in the wheat.

Cautiously Jack raised himself and parting the stalks, peered out. He saw something he had not noticed before. The man, who doubtless owned the belongings which had alarmed Jack, lay stretched out at the foot of a tree. He was on his face sleeping.

But was he sleeping?

An ugly, dark stain discolored the ground around him. His shirt was dyed crimson. Jack saw, with a shudder, that he had nothing to fear here. The poor peasant was dead. Shot down by wandering Uhlans no doubt, as he was about to gather his harvest.

"Poor fellow, he'll never need these now," said Jack, as driven by thirst and hunger he investigated the stone jug and the basket. One held cider, the other the man's dinner of black bread, onions and coarse bacon.

Too famished to mind the idea of eating the dead man's dinner, Jack stuffed his pockets, took a long pull of the cider jug and then plunged into the wood. Here he flung himself down to rest and eat. Then, tired as he was, he forced himself to rise and travel on again.

Faint and far off the distant rumble of cannonading came to his ears, but here in the woods it was as calm and peaceful as if war, death and slaughter were forgotten things. At length he came to a place where the woods thinned out and there was a small clearing. He was about to advance across this when he saw something that caused his heart to give a quick leap and stopped him short in his tracks.

At one side of the clearing was an aeroplane!

It was a big monoplane with gauzy, yellow wings and a body painted the color of the sky on a gray day, no doubt to make it invisible at any considerable height.

Any doubt that it was a war machine was removed by the sight of a small but wicked-looking rapid-fire gun that was mounted on its forward part.

Jack was still looking at it, rooted to the spot as if he had been a figure of stone, when there was a sudden crackle on the floor of the wood behind him.

Then came an order sharp and crisp.

"Arrette!"

Jack was not a French scholar but there was something in the way the command was given that made him stand without moving a muscle. Footsteps came behind him and then he felt rather than saw a man passing from the rear to face him.

He worked round to the front of the boy and then Jack saw that he was a small man with carefully waxed mustache in whose hand was a particularly serviceable-looking revolver, which he held unpleasantly level at Jack's head.