But out of the ragged volley which the panic-stricken enemy fired at the plane one ball found its billet in the neck of Dennis's mare, and with a squeal and a bound that almost unseated him she tore madly northwards, in spite of all his efforts to stay her.
In vain he hauled on the bit reins; the maddened creature was beyond all human control. The shout of warning from the men behind him died away. The trampled wood and the shell-torn grassland merged into a confused carpet of greeny white beneath him. She took an empty trench in her stride without checking perceptibly, until a crater yawned before them, into which she plunged, tried gamely to keep her feet, and finally rolled over and over to the bottom, flinging her rider clear as she fell dead.
CHAPTER XXVI
Under the German Eagle
Dennis picked himself up with a sob of bitter disappointment, as he realised that the dead mare, which had carried him for a brief moment among his own people, had now landed him once more a good mile within the enemy's lines.
His first act was to bury the sergeant's sword in the earth; his next to reload his Webley revolver; and then, spying a gap in the rim of the crater above him, he clambered up, to find himself on the floor of a German trench!
Not twenty yards away men were busy with pick and shovel, making good the effect of the shell explosion on their parapet; and on the impulse of the moment he dived unseen into the mouth of a dug-out immediately in front of him.