As for Bill and his friends, that sudden irruption of the Germans over the Marne swamped the hovels in which they were lying, swamped, too, the shattered dwelling in which Heinrich Hilker and Alphonse lay in waiting. It drove both parties in fact to the cellars, and thence into the subterranean passages which joined them. There, late one morning, it brought the two parties face to face; though, to be sure, Heinrich and Alphonse were as yet unaware of the presence of Bill and his party.
"It's a noise! It's someone around!" said Nobby, when the party had sat in the dark cellar for perhaps a couple of hours listening to the roar of guns above, and sometimes hearing voices. "Always them Germans! Ain't that a German voice yahring away? Listen!"
"Sure!" said Larry; "German, and not so far away. It'll be Fritz searching these dug-outs, these cellars. Boys, is it your wish that Fritz should come down here and take you into the open? Have you come all this way, right along here to within almost speaking distance of your mates, just to be hiked out by a few Fritzes?"
Bill stopped him.
"There's a row going on," he said; "it's men fighting, and not many of 'em—two or three at the most, I should say. Stay here, you boys. Let's get along, Jim and Larry and Nobby; we'll come back and report in a few minutes."
They crept along the passage, full of cobwebs and dirt and debris, and pitch dark at first, till they had traversed perhaps a hundred yards, passing here and there the entrances to other cellars; for bear in mind they were in the country of the vine-growers of France, and huge cellars are required to store the wines produced by the vineyards which cluster along the sides of the Marne valley. Then a gleam of light lit the passage, and pushing on they came in time, after many twists and turns, to another cellar, from which issued now the voices of men engaged in a strenuous struggle. Creeping in, they found themselves in a large cellar of brick, on the floor of which two men rolled hither and thither, locked in a firm embrace, breathing heavily, sometimes shouting at one another. Their figures were fully lit up by an opening above, which gave light and ventilation to the cellar, and which presently allowed Bill and his friends to take in every atom of their surroundings.
"Two poilus fighting! and——" gasped Larry.
"And talking German!" said Nobby. "German!—listen to 'em!"
Bill clutched Jim by the arm. "Jingo! that one with his head close to the ground, it's—— I'd swear it!"
Jim took a firm hold of his young friend, for standing there at the entrance, peering into the cellar, he had at first not obtained so good a view of the combatants. But now for a moment the two men, locked in one another's arms, ceased their struggles to gain breath for a continuance of the conflict. Then it was that he obtained a full view of the face of the man who lay nearest the ground. It was Heinrich Hilker; no French uniform could disguise the scoundrel. But the other—no, he did not know him.