They reached the ditch shortly before a rocket was due overhead. Making assurance doubly sure, they flattened against the outer slope of a shell hole, took off their caps, and each sought a tuft of grass through which to peer.
Simultaneously, by two short taps, both conveyed a warning. They had heard a slight rustling directly in front. A Verrey light, and not a rocket, flamed through the darkness. Its brilliancy was intense. But the Verrey light has a peculiar property: far more effective than the rocket when it reveals troops in motion, it is rendered practically useless if men remain still. Working parties and scouts counteract its vivid beams by absolute rigidity. The uplifted pick or hammer, the advanced foot, the raised arm, must be kept in statuesque repose, and the reward is complete safety. A rocket, on the other hand, though not half so deadly in exposing an attack, demands that every man within its periphery shall endeavor forthwith to blend with the earth, or he will surely be seen and shot at.
The two Britons, looking through stalks of withered herbage, found themselves gazing into the eyes of a couple of Germans crouching on the level barely six feet away. It seemed literally impossible that the enemy observers should not see them. But strange things happen in war. The Germans were scanning all the visible ground; the Englishmen happened to be on the alert for a recognized danger in that identical spot. So the one party, watching space, saw nothing; the other, prepared for a specific discovery, made it. What was more, when the light failed, the Germans were assured of comparative safety, while their opponents had measured the extent of an instant peril and got ready to face it.
They knew, too, that the Germans must be killed or captured. One was a major, the other a noncommissioned officer, and men of such rank were seldom deputed by the enemy to roam at large through the strip of debated land which British endeavor, drawn by its sporting uncertainties, had rendered most unhealthy for human “game” of the Hun species.
A dark night in that part of French Flanders becomes palpably black during a few seconds after a flare. The Englishmen squatted back on their heels. Neither drew his revolver, but each right hand clutched a trench knife, a peculiarly murderous-looking implement with an oval handle, and shaped like a corkscrew, except that the screw is replaced by a short, flat, dagger-pointed blade. No signal was needed. Each knew exactly what to do. The accident of position allotted the major to Martin.
The Germans came on stealthily. They had noted the shell-hole, and sat on its crumbling edge, meaning to slide down and creep out on the other side. Martin’s left hand gripped a stout boot by the ankle. In the fifth of a second he had a heavy body twisted violently and flung face down in the loose earth at the bottom of the hole. A knee was planted in the small of the prisoner’s back, the point of the knife was under his right ear, and Martin was saying, in quite understandable German:
“If you move or speak, I’ll cut your throat!”
The words have a brutal sound, but it does not pay to be squeamish on such occasions, and the German language adapts itself naturally to phrases of the kind.
Sergeant Mason had to solve his own problem by a different method. The quarry chanced to be leaning forward at the moment a vicious tug accelerated his progress. As a result, he fell on top of the hunter, and there was nothing for it but the knife. A ghastly squeal was barely stifled by the Englishman’s hand over the victim’s mouth. At thirty yards, or thereabouts, and coming from a deep hole, the noise might have been a grunt. Nevertheless, it reached the German trench.
“Wer da?” hissed a voice, and Martin heard the click of a machine-gun as it swung on its tripod.