CHAPTER IX
In the Sniper's Lair
"You hound!" shouted the lad, as with great presence of mind he held his right arm aloft with the last bomb tightly clutched in his fingers.
There was a moment of agonised suspense which seemed extraordinarily protracted, and then he alighted, unhurt, on a pile of blankets, the unexploded bomb still in his hand!
"Thank Heaven!" were his first words as he lay, his heart beating furiously and his overwrought frame quivering from the shock.
The atmosphere of the vault—for it was nothing less—was close and stuffy, and there was a greasy smell in the still air, emanating from some lubricant used to protect the stocks of spare rifles which he was presently to discover.
"By Jupiter! if this bomb had gone off down here there wouldn't be much of me left," he muttered, gathering himself up and remembering that he had placed a spare torch in one of his breast pockets.
He was thankful then that he had not had time to change his tattered tunic, and, drawing it out, he pressed the button and played the bright beam up and down the vault.
It was one of those marvellous underground constructions for which the Germans seem to have a positive genius. The chalk had been excavated for trench building, the walls were boarded, and square balks of timber supported the roof in a double row of pillars.
He could not count the cases of ammunition—there were so many—nor the stacks of rifles that were stored in the place, but he saw enough to convince him that he had made a very important haul, if only things were going well above ground.