With the dying out of the star shells the darkness again settled over that vicinity. Dave ordered the man to move out of the shell-hole, and then told him to march on, keeping his hands up as before. The fellow walked with a slight limp, showing that he had either been wounded or had hurt himself.
Knowing that the body of Germans he had seen must still be in the wood, Dave gave that vicinity a wide berth, moving somewhat to the southward. This presently brought him to another small strip of wood.
And then the unexpected happened.
As if by magic fully a dozen Germans leaped up from where they had been concealed. All pointed their guns at him, but not a shot was fired, for, as he had surmised, several detachments were out in an endeavor to obtain prisoners from whom they expected to elicit much-needed information.
The young lieutenant’s fighting blood was up. He had no desire to go back to a German prison, and the instant the enemy showed themselves, he began to blaze away with his rifle, running at top speed for the shelter of the wood as he did so. He had the satisfaction of seeing one of the Germans go down, and a second quickly followed. Then came the discharge of several of the enemy’s firearms, and Dave felt a hot flash of pain through his right side.
“I’m shot! They’ve got me!” was the thought that flashed through his mind, and yet he did not stop, but continued to run and to use his gun. After him, but at a distance, came the Germans, determined to make him a prisoner or shoot him down.
“Stop!” came the sudden cry from in front of our hero, and he saw several soldiers rise up from the brushwood, all leveling their rifles at him. “Hands up!”
“Are you Americans?” questioned Dave quickly, for the darkness was too intense for him to distinguish what they were.
“You bet!” was the laconic response. “Who are you?”
Dave told them, advancing as he did so. And then he added quickly: “There are about a dozen or fifteen German soldiers after me—some kind of raiding party.”