“Three of them!” said Porky. “Come on!”
CHAPTER VI
TAKING THREE PRISONERS
“Come nothing!” said Beany slangily. “You stay right here until we can talk this thing over, and make some sort of a plan. I don’t propose to go into something we can’t get out of.”
“Well,” said Porky, “the only plan I have is so crazy that I’m sort of afraid to tell you about it. But it would certainly be sort of nifty to take those men ourselves instead of running back to the bunch for help. It would kind of put a little gilt on things and would be something to tell Bill and Peggy about when they grow up a little.”
Beany was impressed. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “Looks like we haven’t much to tell them about, nothing but the submarine and the secret passage and that sort of thing.”
“And the spies back home,” added Porky. “No, we ought to wind up with something else. Beside, if I don’t get hold of a Hun or two after what we saw and heard back at the Duval farm, I don’t think I’ll ever live.”
“Well, I’m with you,” agreed Beany. “Now let’s plan. We sure have got to get a prisoner or two our own selves. What’s next?”
For twenty minutes the boys, heads close together, whispered rapidly. Then they rose and went noiselessly toward the false hillock.
The last hundred yards they crept, lying flat and motionless whenever a flare lit the sky. They were not frequent, however, and the boys made good progress. When they reached the mound, Porky, who was the best climber, crept to the top. He used the most infinite caution, and there was not a sound to betray his slow, sure progress. Gaining the top, he found what he had expected to find. A sodded opening, like a double trap door, operated from the inside, was slightly opened for air. So cleverly was it arranged with small bushes and grass growing on the trap doors, that it would have been impossible to detect it. Porky felt cautiously about the edges. Then he listened. From below came an unmistakable sound—the noise of a couple of men snoring. The sound was so muffled by the thick steel walls, the earth and stones and sod outside them, that they were able to sleep without fear of detection. Porky shook his head admiringly. He was forced to acknowledge that the ingenuity of the foe seemed to know no bounds. Again he tried the trap doors. They were balanced to a hair and moved upward at his touch. He felt in his pocket, arranged something in either hand, then swung the doors both upward.
It would be untrue to say that a flash of doubt did not pass over the reckless boy at that instant. He thought of the General and of the way in which that great man trusted them to do their part in keeping out of trouble. He had surmised that there were three men below. There was room for a dozen. He had taken it for granted that he and Beany could pull off a stunt that instead might end in their immediate death or worse. But there he was, perched on the top, the heavy trap doors swinging wide, and below in the dense darkness the sound of men snoring. Porky took time to listen. There were snores from two, that was clear, and still another man talked and muttered fretfully in his sleep. Porky could hear no others.