They found the corporal grave and preoccupied.
"As I suppose you fellows have already guessed," he began, "we're going to-night on a scouting party. We're to find out the condition of the wire in front of that third trench that the Huns still hold, and we want to get more exact information about the location of the enemy's machine guns. Anything else we find out will be welcome, but those are the main things.
"It's going to be pretty risky work," he continued. "Not but what there's always plenty of risk about a job of this kind, but to-night there's more than usual. The fierce fighting to-day has got the enemy all stirred up and he'll be on the alert. Likely enough he'll have scouting parties of his own out, and we may run across them in the dark. Then it will be a question of who is the quicker with knife or bayonet. Now you boys scatter and get your crawling suits and hoods and masks, and we'll be ready for business.
"I can see that there'll be no monotony in our young lives to-night," observed Frank to Bart, as they obeyed instructions.
"Not that you can notice," agreed Bart. "The corp has quite a little program marked out for us."
"So it seems."
"And No Man's Land is going to be a little rougher land to-night than it ever was before," predicted Tom. "That mine explosion hasn't done a thing to it."
"All the better," chimed in Billy. "There'll be better places to hide in when Fritz throws up his star shells. But let's get a hustle on or the corp will be after us."
They got into their "crawling suits," so named because they were used only on scouting duty, when it was necessary to move over the earth on their stomachs or at best on hands and knees. They were a dead black in color, and in addition to the suit itself comprised a black mask and hood. The hood was loose and shapeless, so as to avoid the sharp outline that would have been afforded if it were tight-fitting.
Dressed in this fashion and lying prone and motionless on the ground whenever a star shell threw its greenish radiance over the field, the scouts were reasonably safe from detection and sniping. They would seem, if seen at all, to be just so many more objects added to the hundreds that littered up the ground between the two armies.