CHAPTER XVIII

THE WRATH OF THE HUN

“Oh! Oh!” cried Helen, clinging tightly to Barton’s arm. “Let us turn back!”

“What good’ll that do!” growled Gear, who heard her.

One of the French nurses crossed herself and murmured a prayer as Barton could see by her whispering lips. He could not fail to note how much better the French girls were taking it than Helen. She had quite lost her self-control and was fairly hysterical.

He could not afford to show any trepidation himself, even if he felt it. He was in the uniform of an officer of the American forces and there were French eyes upon him. In any case he must not show the white feather, and it stabbed his pride that Helen, an American Red Cross nurse, should do so.

An aerial bomb fell nearer and almost deafened them with its explosion. Barton sprang out of the motor-car and aided Helen to alight.

“Into the ditch--everybody!” he shouted. “Lie down!”

He saw Renau and Gear spring to the help of the other women, then in a moment Barton was rushing toward the muddy sluiceway with Helen Fuller.

“Oh, _don’t_ drag me around so, Frank! I’m wet to my _knees_. Isn’t there some place--”

The roaring of the powerful motor overhead drowned her further complaint. It was then that another shell fell.

Had Barton not dragged the girl down with him--both falling flat into the bottom of the ditch--they must have suffered the fate of those who had not yet got away from the motor-car--the two nurses, Monsieur Renau, and poor smiling, reckless Johnny Gear, Johnny, who had run away from home to “see what the blooming war was like.”

Overhead the aero engine moaned into the distance. Barton got to his knees and pulled the girl up beside him. It was light enough for them to see each other.

“Oh! Oh! Take me away! I must go somewhere. Oh, Frank! I--I’m all _muddy_,” Helen, poor shallow, selfish Helen, wailed.

“Oh!” gasped Barton, unheeding. “They’re dead--dead!”

He stood up and tossed back the thick hair from his brow. He had not his cap. He found his army pistol gripped in his right hand. His left was holding up the girl whom he clutched by the shoulder as carelessly as he might have held a half-filled sack of flour.

“You’re not _listening_!” cried Helen. “Don’t you _hear_? Take me somewhere--take me where it is _safe_.”

He was listening, but not to her cries. That terrible thing in the air was coming back.

The moan of the powerful engine was increasing again. A few guns in the distance began to pop. The Field Artillery was getting into action--_and he was not there_.

What carnage might not have already been accomplished! This terrible thing in the air, swooping through the fog, might have brought havoc and disaster to the American forces.

“Take me away! Take me away!” the girl cried over and over again, fairly clawing at his arm to attract his attention.

“Where shall I take you? One place is as safe as another--until this raid is over.”

It was growing lighter all the time. The fog was rapidly thinning. Suddenly Helen shrieked:

“Where is our car?”

There was nothing but a hole in the road where it had stood. Not a shred of it remained within their straining vision. Wiped out--like that!

“Here it comes again!” shouted Barton.

Through the dissipating mist the great sausage-like body of the German air-raider appeared. It was one of the newest and largest airships yet conceived and built. It drifted low--not two hundred yards from the earth.

“Down on the ground!” commanded Barton. “If they spy us----”

[Illustration: He did fire--futilely, perhaps--as the great car circled clumsily above the spot. (_See page 201_)]

The huge flying car swooped lower. It seemed to be heading directly for the two Americans in the muddy road. The lieutenant flung the girl down again, but stood erect himself, his legs astride, his head back, eyes glaring through the shreds of fog at the airship. He had involuntarily assumed an attitude of defiance and his pistol was raised at firing angle.

He did fire--futilely, perhaps--as the great car circled clumsily above the spot. He emptied the weapon at the flying foe.

Suddenly--whether a chance bullet had hit some vital spot or not--a red flame leaped to life in the envelope of the huge bag. So low sailed the machine that Barton could see a man run along a narrow platform and shoot the spray of a chemical fire extinguisher up at the spreading flame.

Only for a moment was this attempt continued. Then a second man appeared, and the usual high, staccato voice of a Prussian officer uttering a command sounded sharply through the rumble of the dying motor.

The efforts of the man with the fire extinguisher ceased. Some catastrophe had overtaken the huge war machine. Her engine had lost its stroke. She was coming to earth--and that in enemy territory. The crew would destroy the ship as they always do in such instances.

A wild cheer burst from Barton’s lips. Swiftly he reloaded his automatic pistol. The nose of the wabbly, creaking machine, so clumsy looking that Barton half wondered how it was ever lifted from the ground, plunged toward the earth.

It passed directly over the road. The balloon envelope was afire in a dozen places. Barton could see the flash of an axe in the officer’s hands as he wrecked the mechanism of the still flying airship.

There was a deafening crash when the car hit the ground. The American saw one man, turning over and over in the air, dashed forty feet at least by the force of the impact. Other figures climbed down from the crushed car on to which the balloon collapsed slowly, all afire.

“Come on!” shouted the excited lieutenant, waving his weapon. “Now we’ve got ’em!”

“Frank! Stop! Don’t you _dare_ leave me!” wailed Helen Fuller.

“Wait for me here, Helen----”

“I tell you I _won’t_!” cried the girl. She stamped her foot in rage. “You take me right away from here!”

“But I must round those fellows up. We’ve got ’em--don’t you see? Wait here for me if you are afraid.”

“I’ll _never_ forgive you, Frank Barton, if you leave me! And I _won’t_ go over there! Those--those men will kill us. Oh, Frank! Come back!”

He hesitated but a moment to answer her. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to be a quitter, Helen,” he declared, and leaped the ditch to get into the field upon which the wrecked German airship had fallen.

With a scream she followed him. She ran faster than he, and caught his right arm again just as he was rounding the rear of the wreckage. Before them stood fourteen men in the gray olive of the German uniform. The man thrown when the ship came down never moved.

Barton saw instantly that the crew of the airship--even the commander himself--were unarmed. Good reason for that. Deep in the enemy’s country, without a possible chance of escape through the lines, a peaceful demeanor and appearance spelled safety for them.

Barton raised his pistol, Helen still clinging to his arm. The Germans, or, at least, those in the front of the group, raised their hands in token of surrender. Even the commander called out: “_Kamerad!_”

“Frank Barton! Take me away! Save me!” shrieked the hysterical girl.

She hung, a dead weight, upon his arm and pulled down the weapon. One of the men in the back of the group had been stooping down, his hands on the ground. Now he stood up, stepped clear of his companions, and swung his right hand back.

With the accuracy of a baseball player he flung the sharp stone he had picked up. Barton tried to fire and dodge, but Helen’s interference made both attempts impossible. The stone struck him just above the right temple and glanced off, cutting such a gash that the blood poured down his face, blinding him.

With a shout the Germans started for Barton and the girl. The lieutenant, feeling himself helpless, thrust his weapon into Helen’s hand.

“Defend yourself!” he gasped, and then slipped slowly to the ground, crumpling in a senseless heap at her feet.