“How'd they get you?”
“Are you hurt?”
These were a few of the questions put to Tom and Jack as they were surrounded by the rescuing party of their friends, led, it afterward developed, by the very lieutenant with whom the two air service boys had started in the patrol across No Man's Land.
The German captors had either all surrendered or been killed, and the tables were most effectively switched around. At first Tom and Jack were too surprised and overwhelmingly grateful to answer.
But they soon understood what had happened. And then they told the story of their fight against odds until captured. They said nothing just then of the unexpected information that had come to them about Harry Leroy's presence in a German camp so comparatively near their own lines. But they resolved, at the first opportunity, to make use of the information.
The shooting of the big guns gradually ceased when it was made manifest that neither side was ready for a general engagement. The pop-pop of the machine weapons, too, died away and the star shells ceased rising.
“Come on you Fritzies—what's left of you,” cried the lieutenant, when he had made sure that there were no others of his party whom he could rescue.
Then with Tom and Jack the center of a happy, tumultuous throng of their own comrades, the trip back to the American lines was begun. It was without incident save that on the way a wounded British soldier was found lying in a shell hole and carried in, ultimately to recover.
Tom and Jack told what had happened to them, how they had been surrounded and led away; and then, came the story of the lieutenant who had led the patrol party which had turned defeat into victory with the aid of reinforcements which were sent to him.
He had seen his hopes blasted when rushed by the big crowd of the Hun patrol, and, though slightly wounded, he realized that absolute defeat would come to him and his men unless he could get help. He sent a runner back with word to send relief, and then, surrounding himself with what few men remained alive and uncaptured, the fight went on.