So the shaft led into the machine-gun emplacement. That was just what we wanted to know; our reconnaissance was at an end.
Delpos drove a cheddite bomb into the wall beneath the ladder, and I tied a slow fuse to it. We jumped towards the river. I lighted the fuse as I jumped from the sap, just as an immense body appeared in the opening and blocked the way.
“Wer da?”
“‘Wer da?’ you’ll find out who is there,” Delpos muttered, and with a blow full on the chest, while I threw myself on his legs, we got the colossus down, as he shouted for help.
But the firing drowned his cries.
Then, to deprive him of all interest in keeping on, I applied my revolver to his forehead, and Delpos kicked him under the chin. We left him senseless and voiceless for at least a quarter of an hour.
We jumped into our boat and slid under the camouflage. Whether we had made too much noise or a sentinel had heard us, I don’t know, but we were hardly there, and were just pushing off, when shots came in our direction, star shells lighted the river, and men ran up and down the bank.
We heard them cry, “There he is ... there....” They had seen our dummy in the middle of the river and were firing at him with rifles and bombarding him with grenades. We did not move. By stretching out an arm we could almost have touched the legs of the men who came down to the water’s edge to hurl their grenades. None of them dreamed we were so near.
The alarm lasted about twenty seconds; it seemed like a century.