“I’ll dig you out,” his friend replied, at the same time poising his bayonetted rifle for the job of scooping out enough earth to permit Tom to slip his legs out of the trap.
Harper was in that position when suddenly his eye caught something in the fallen tree which made him swerve suddenly. “You beast!” he cried, and with all the gathered force of his strong body he flung his rifle, as a primitive savage would a spear, into the nearby branches.
Tom, looking at that instant, saw the bayonet sink to the hilt in a brutal-looking German who at that instant was bringing up his gun to fire upon them. With one agonized grunt he crumbled, and then lay still; and Harper, averting his head, recovered his weapon.
Obviously the Boche had been an enemy sharp-shooter hidden in the upper branches of the tree, and until that moment had remained stunned by the force of the fall precipitated by a shell from his own lines.
Harper set to work instantly to dig Tom out, but it was not an easy job. As he lay there, virtually helpless, gazing up at the sky and at the scores of aeroplanes dashing, dodging, cruising about, he gave a gasp of astonishment which also attracted his friend’s attention.
With consummate daring a Boche pilot had dodged the apparently impenetrable American air defenses, and, with half a dozen planes pursuing and attacking him, was making straight toward a big anchored observation baloon that hung motionless in the air a little to the north of where the first wave of shock troops thus far had progressed.
The tremendous pounding of the motors rose even above the din of big and little guns. From every point Allied planes were sweeping down upon the Hun machine, but before they could overtake him he had fired an incendiary bullet at the baloon with unerring aim.
As it burst into a mass of flames that were lurid, even in the now broad daylight, the two men who had been occupying it as observers jumped out. There was nothing else for them to do, and probably it was not their first parachute descent from a great height. Nevertheless Tom gave an involuntary gasp at the apparent cool courage of the men as they leaped into space, and, for a distance of fully a hundred feet, shot down with tremendous speed toward the earth until their parachutes opened up.
They landed upon the opposite side of the wood, and the men who had watched them never learned whether they escaped in safety or were killed in the inferno into which they landed.
In five minutes more Tom was free. The fight by that time had forged steadily ahead, and beyond the delay of stopping to ease the dying moments of one brave fellow with a last gulp of water, they rushed forward to join the others of their platoon.