Now, this was not so ridiculous as it might appear to some readers who may not know that Tubby, together with Rob and Merritt Crawford, had been abroad on the battlefields of Belgium and Northern France, where it was even then, in the early stages of the war, a common occurrence for aviators to soar over supply depots, railway stations, and various other central points, to try and blow them up by bombs they let fall from a great height. Why, Tubby could remember having looked upon a church used as an observation tower that had been successfully bombed in that way by a daring Teuton aviator.
He took a little more comfort, however, when presently he remembered that Donald had heard the plotters going over the details of their plans, and that according to all that was then said, they very evidently meant to use dynamite, planted under the trestle, and fired by means of a long copper insulated wire and a battery.
Plodding on, the little party began to ascend what seemed to be a gradual rise of ground. This would indicate that they were drawing near the railway line, for it was on a high bank at this place, a necessity caused by the fact of having to cross the river close by.
Tubby wondered what the next half-hour was fated to bring forth. He hoped they were going to meet with the success their efforts deserved, and that the miserable scheme might be nipped in the bud. Tired as the stout youth certainly must be, he was yet buoyed up by the excitement that had him in its clutches; and though the threatened bridge had been twice as far distant Tubby stood ready to keep going until he dropped from sheer exhaustion.
But the time was coming when the dull monotony of that advance was fated to be abruptly broken, and in a way calculated to give them a fresh thrill.
CHAPTER XVII
LYNX LAW
Donald had asked anxiously several times how the night was going. As a scout he might possibly have been able to tell this fairly well by the position of the heavenly bodies, particularly the planets; for every scout is supposed to include this woodsman’s trick in his education before he can call himself fit to wander at will in an unknown wilderness. But then Donald was hardly in a condition to depend on himself, and so he several times whispered to Rob:
“Is it gitting alang toward eleven, wud ye mind tellin’ me?”
It was still far from that, but evidently the particular hour Donald mentioned was wearing upon his mind, and he took counsel from his fears. Rob concluded that the long and heavily-laden munition freight was due at the bridge about eleven. And at the steady progress they were making he felt pretty certain they would be in ample time to give warning, unless something cropped up to detain them, which Rob fervently hoped would not be the case.
Tubby was still clinging to the rear, but doing nobly—for him. Even Andy felt a tinge of justifiable pride in the work of the stout chum, because he knew what a handicap Tubby always labored under when energy and sustained effort had to be looked to in order to pull one through. It meant a whole lot more for Tubby to accomplish this swift tramp than to any one of the other fellows, injured Donald alone excepted.