He saw several Marines in front and on each side of him fall victims of the accurate shooting of the concealed enemy, but this did not feaze him in the least. He knew he was going to dash through successfully and he knew he was going to find a hidden machine-gun nest and whip it single handed if necessary.
And he was not mistaken. He reached the opposite timber without receiving a scratch. Then followed a more careful procedure to hunt out the pests that were doing everything in their power to make things uncomfortable for the Marines. The latter were armed with rifles and hand grenades, and the timber was soon ringing with evidence of their discoveries.
Phil had charge of a squad that worked as a unit in the scouring of the woods, and Tim was a member of this squad. Alternately they were in hiding in thickets of saplings and bushes or racing ahead to make a swift surprise attack on a machine-gun nest located by the sound of firing or the creeping cunning of a camouflaged spy. This handful of Marines cleaned out two nests without the loss of a man, and then, it appearing that there were no others within the sweep of their advance, they separated in parties of two or three each to hunt for snipers after agreeing on a place of meeting and a call by which Phil might summon them together again whenever he desired.
Phil and Tim, perhaps by force of habit, continued together without other company. The Marines were now driving a considerable rear guard of the enemy ahead of them, principally snipers and machine gunners, who were trailing behind the main body of the defeated boches to facilitate the latter’s retreat. Realizing that the remnant of this rear guard was moving more rapidly in its haste to get out of the way of the terrible American butt-or-muzzle riflemen and hand-grenade throwers, Phil and Tim put as much speed to their advance as the character of the terrain would permit, hoping to overtake some of the fugitive snipers.
A few minutes after the squad had spread out to cover a larger territory, the two friends arrived at the meadow-like opening into a wooded ravine which appeared to grow deeper and deeper in the direction taken by the fleeing boches. With little hesitation they dashed into the ravine, becoming more cautious, however, as they entered the timber-shaded lowland with its tangle of ferns and shrubbery.
It was really a dangerous undertaking, but these boys were in a dangerous business. The ravine was lined with many ideal places for concealment of snipers and the route taken by the venturesome pair along the bottom was an ideal place to get sniped. But Phil and Tim felt that the place ought to be explored, and as a call to summon the other boys of the squad would serve only to alarm any hidden bodies in the vicinity, they decided to take the burden of the investigation on their own shoulders.
They advanced a hundred yards into the ravine without seeing another living creature, except a few squirrels and hundreds of birds which chattered and chirped away as if the carnage of a world war was the farthest possible from their thoughts.
The boom of cannon was confined now to distant portions of the indeterminate battle line, and the discharge of smaller firearms also had ceased in the immediate vicinity. It seemed to the two boys that they and the squirrels and the birds had the ravine all to themselves, but they were destined presently to be disillusioned.
Suddenly—of course, for all explosions are sudden,—Phil was startled by the discharge of two rifles from behind a thicket twenty feet ahead. “Ping!” sung a bullet past his left ear. Tim was not startled. He did not know what hit him. Over he went, and Phil sprang behind a tree, as a true American, to meet the enemy Indian fashion.