"March!" he exclaimed; "we'll make straight for the Butte and then for the road. Look out for Germans! A few German overcoats would give us fine cover, and this mist also should help us far on our way. Step out—the faster we go the better!"
They went off through the gathering gloom, through the wet mist which was already cloaking the earth, and presently swung past the western end of the Butte of Warlencourt, which marked the limit of advance of the British army in 1916. Then their feet gained the Albert-Bapaume road, and presently they were speeding along it and getting every half-hour nearer to the sounds of battle. But though they marched nearer and nearer to their friends, what chance had they? Would they ever break through that line of Germans which undoubtedly extended far and wide and cut them adrift from the Allied armies?
CHAPTER XIV Where Men fought for Empire
"Halt! I hear men coming! There are troops on the road—listen!"
Bill, who was leading the party of men cut off from the British army—a party, be it remembered, comprising not only sturdy British soldiers, but just as sturdy members of the new American army—suddenly thrust out an arm and brought them to a standstill. There on the paved highway which runs from Albert to Bapaume, and which the British, with that thoroughness for which they have now no doubt won world-wide fame, had macadamized and rolled until it was as smooth as a billiard table, though but a few months before it had been churned and smashed to pieces by gun-fire—there, unhappily, the same churning and smashing process was being repeated between the spot where Bill and his friends stood and Albert itself, perhaps five miles distant. For in that direction the thunder of guns was loudest, and even the mist and the darkness could not hide the flash of hidden batteries and the bursting of shells from British artillery, nor could the sounds of distant battle altogether drown other sounds—the deep muffled tread of a mass of men.
"Coming back towards us from the Albert direction," said Bill. "Probably men who have been relieved, or perhaps it's a ration party. Anyway, off we go! Take the road here to the right. Look sharp!"
He stepped off the macadam, to find himself to his arm-pits in a huge shell-hole—a relic of 1916—in which also reclined what remained of a shattered tank—one of the land fighting-ships which Britain had brought to bear against the Germans. Clambering out of it, with two other men of the party who had been similarly unfortunate, he struck away from the road, the others following closely. Then, of a sudden, Larry called to him.
"Say, Bill, here's just the sort of stunt for us! Seems like an old building."