Ten or fifteen minutes after Phil and Dan arrived at the mouth of the sandpit, the conversation ended and the two men departed, starting up the path by which the escaped prisoners had descended. The latter waited a minute or two for them to get a good start, and were about to follow them and, if possible, prevent them from giving the alarm if they discovered the wrecked tunnel leading from their prison, when a new surprise of startling nature added another thrill to the adventures of the night.
“Phil!”
This utterance of Sergeant Speed’s given name was scarcely above a whisper, but distinct. The latter shivered as if a ghost had touched him on the shoulder. Then concluding with a desperate denial of his “sense of sound location,” that it must have been his companion that spoke to him, he turned to Dan to ask him what he wanted. But the latter was looking about curiously to learn the source of the familiar address.
A moment later both of them beheld a third human form standing a few feet away and instinctively assumed an attitude of defense, prepared to change it into one of attack, when the supposed stranger spoke thus in low tones:
“Don’t be alarmed, Phil. I am Tim Turner whom you left for dead in Belleau Woods.”
CHAPTER XX
ESCAPE
“Well, of all the most wonderful things that ever happened this is out of the ordinary!”
One of the characteristics that made Phil a good soldier was the fact that it was almost impossible to astound him. A fellow Marine commented on this fact once, and he replied:
“Sure. If a Hun plane should drop a bomb on the end of my nose in the middle of the night, I shouldn’t be the least bit surprised.”
His first impulse when Tim Turner presented himself to him and Dan Fentress in the middle of the night at the entrance of the French sandpit was to say something ridiculous. So he popped an anticlimax, which amounted to serving notice on himself and his two friends that this was no place for astonishment. The situation was therefore cleared up for the benefit of all three with two sentences: