“Here I am, Thad!” shouted a high-pitched voice, and with the words a head appeared above the edge of a deep shell crater not thirty feet away, as Bumpus commenced to laboriously crawl on hands and knees out of the hole.
Of course it looked as though he had dropped down there with the idea that by so doing he might better escape the danger of being caught in the rain of iron splinters following each explosion. Really it was not such a bad scheme on the part of Bumpus, and had they been compelled to stay there longer the others might have copied his example with profit to themselves.
Thad hurriedly beckoned in order to hasten the coming of the other scout.
“We’re going to cut and run for it, don’t you see?” he bellowed.
That nerved Bumpus to new exertions, so that he speedily emerged from the pit, little the worse for his experience. Later on he candidly admitted that it had not been wholly a clever idea of his own. In fact, he had been blasted into the hole by the sudden concussion of air when a shell burst near by, and, finding himself prone at the bottom, hugged the ground until he could feel himself all over and ascertain whether he were still sound of body and limb.
By that time the field hospital was pretty well deserted, of the living, that is to say. Looking around for the last time Thad could see numerous still forms on the ground, and he knew that death had reaped a heavy harvest. Just then he hated the German gunners most violently, although later on, when he cooled down, he realized that it must have all been a terrible mistake, for surely they would never think of bombarding a field hospital, always held sacred between honorable foes.
When the three boys hurried out of the camp the shells were still falling as if they meant to honeycomb that sector thoroughly for some reason. Perhaps a signal had gone wrong, and it was believed that one of the most dangerous batteries of the French lay concealed under branches at this point.
Thad never knew the truth about it; in fact, no one could learn the reason why. Just then the one main object they had in view was to put as great a distance between themselves and that harried ground as possible.
Amidst a jumble of wagons, vans, ambulances, motor lorries and ordinary cars, all striving to push along that one narrow thoroughfare, the three scouts pressed on. One shell had dropped squarely in the road and made such a yawning gap that it was necessary for each vehicle to go around the aperture. A van had also been wrecked at the same time, for the boys could see dreadful signs of this whichever way they turned their eyes.
Presently, however, they seemed to be getting beyond the curtain of fire which the big German guns had established. That would mean the danger was over. Bumpus began to get back a little of his lost color when he discovered this pleasing fact; and for that matter, both of the other boys felt better. It was certainly anything but a laughing matter, running the gantlet of those fearful explosives and amidst such desolating scenes in the bargain.