“I’m with you, Lieutenant,” Farnham said.
“Of course we are,” said Kelly.
The corporal smiled and nodded eagerly.
“Then, Lieutenant Richards, we are under your leadership,” Herbert said. “You know how you and Gill went about it. Go to it, old sport!”
And go they did, sneaking through the thickets like boys playing Indian or hunters stalking game, Don leading the way, and they came out at the exact spot that he and Gill had reached, but there was no sign of the mountaineer.
The German field piece was in the same place as before and an artillery squad of seven or eight new men had been working the gun. Having noted the white flag, a bit of poor Tomlinson’s shirt, on a stick they had stopped shooting while Hun officers investigated the inside of the recent stronghold of the Yank squad. But the Hun artillery men were not idle. They had received orders of a more exacting character than the shooting up of a small squad of Americans; now they were to shoot at the American Army and to join in the effort to stem its advance. So each man was engrossed with his duties: the cleaning of the piece, the oiling of mechanisms, the storing of shells for immediate and rapid use when the occasion demanded.
“Now then, men,” said Don, “we’ll select a moment when all of them seem particularly busy and at the word let them have it; then charge. Herb, you take the fellow at the extreme left; I’ll take the next man; Farnham, you take the third in the line; Kelly the fourth. Corporal, that big guy with the specs is yours. And hit ’em, boys; fire at command! Now then, are you ready?”
What followed was a complete surprise to all concerned, Americans and Germans alike. The little bunch of avenging Yanks had planned to spring something, most unexpected, upon their foes and the Huns themselves figured upon doing their duty. Was this for them a fateful spot, or was the gun an unlucky piece, as such things are often said to be? One squad had been nearly wiped out here working the gun and now——
The big shell, fired from a French or an American large caliber gun, may have been aimed with precision from information given by an Allied airplane high in air, or it may have sent its terrible messenger partly at random, hoping that it might land somewhere even near a Hun position. And as Don said afterward, the missile must have had good luck written all over it, for it performed its mission fully.