A heavy howitzer shell fell and burst in the midst of a Belgian battery, which was making its way to the front, causing awful destruction—mangled men and horses going down in heaps.
Henri was in a chill of horror, and Billy so shaken that it was with difficulty that they resisted a wild desire to jump into space—anything to shut out the appalling picture.
The next instant they were staring down upon a hand-to-hand conflict in the woods, within two hundred yards of the tree in which they were perched. British and Germans were engaged in a bayonet duel, in which the former force triumphed, leaving the ground literally covered with German wounded and dead, hardly a man in gray escaping the massacre.
“I can see nothing but red!” Henri was shaking like a leaf.
Billy gave his chum a sharp tap on the cheek with the palm of his hand, hoping thus to divert Henri’s mind and restore his courage.
Billy himself had about all he could do to keep his teeth together, but, by the unselfish devotion he gave to his comrade, he overcame his fear.
“Come, Buddy,” he pleaded; “take a brace! Easy, now; there’s a way to get out of this, I know there is. Put your foot here; your hand there; steady; we’ll be off in a minute.”
By the time the boys had descended to the lower branches of the tree, Henri was once more on “even keel,” in the language of the aviator.
A long limb of the tree extended out over the road. On this the boys wormed their way to the very tip, intending to drop into the highway, recover their bicycles, and make a dash for safety across the country to the west, following the well defined trail worn smooth by the passage of ammunition wagons.
As they clung to the limb, intently listening and alert for any movement that would indicate a returning tide of battle in the immediate neighborhood, a riderless horse, a magnificent coal-black animal, carrying full cavalry equipment, came galloping down the road, urged to ever increasing speed by the whipping against its flanks of swinging holsters.