"Very slight, sir. Only a flesh wound," Frank responded eagerly.
"Then take this light," the colonel ordered, "and follow him at a distance of a hundred yards. If anything should happen to your friend, you follow the directions you have just heard."
"Yes, sir," the lads responded in unison, and, with a hasty salute, were off.
Three times did Joe drop to the ground, as a shadow seemed to move somewhere out in the distance before him. But each time he was up and off again almost upon the instant, thinking of his own safety only as that of his three friends depended upon it.
And what of those inside?
Even the courageous Lieutenant Mackinson was beginning to show the anxiety he felt, while Jerry and Slim, despite their bravest efforts, gave way to occasional expressions of the horror of the thing.
They had pounded upon the walls until they had been overcome with despair, and then they had set to work digging with the only instruments at hand—the bayonets on the German rifles.
But soon they realized that this, too, was as hopeless as the pounding, for it further exhausted the energy which the foul air was rapidly sapping, without making any apparent opening in the thick earthen wall that surrounded them.
"Well," said Slim at last, gulping back his nausea, and smiling almost in his old time way, "I'm as anxious as anybody to keep up hope to the last. But if this is to be our end, I guess we can face it as Americans should."
"Bravo!" exclaimed Lieutenant Mackinson, "I always knew that each one of you fellows had the right sort of stuff in you."