“Not until the very entrance to the bomb chamber,” Tom answered quickly; and Harper corroborated him.
“Very well,” the commander went on quickly. “If that is true, then we are saved some unnecessary labor. It is not likely that we could dig directly into the tunnel from any given spot, but we will proceed directly northward to a point which you consider near to the chamber, but yet a safe distance away, then try to effect an entrance.”
And with competent engineers directing a true northward course, they proceeded rapidly toward Thiaucourt.
Tom, who had been considering the distance carefully, came to a halt and saluted. “I would suggest, sir, that perhaps this is as near as is safe to begin the digging.”
“Very well,” the general replied, and nodded to the colonel.
A moment later fifty men with spades were lined up before their commander for instructions. He marked the spot where the tunnel might be, and then, at right angles to the direction they had walked, or almost directly east and west, he established an imaginary line.
“Dig along that, working toward this point at the centre,” he ordered. “Somewhere along that line you should strike the tunnel. Proceed with care after you are six or seven feet deep.”
Every man there had a fair idea of what depended upon cutting the connection to those bombs before, somewhere to the north, a German hand reached for a switchboard and turned on the current that would cause a holocaust. Also, they knew that they were about the closest in proximity to those hidden mines, so there was no lack of incentive for all the speed that strength could muster.
Dirt flew out of that ever deepening and lengthening pit in a constant cloud, piling up a high trench work on either side. But despite the care to which they had cautioned, it was the muffled exclamation of surprise from a man suddenly dropped downward with a great accompanying scraping and crashing of earth, that heralded the discovery of the tunnel.
The general and colonel both smiled their congratulations to Tom and Harper at the accuracy of their report. At the same time spades worked with feverish haste, the man who fell into the tunnel was extricated undamaged, and the hole was rapidly widened to let two or three in at one time. Then another halt was ordered.