"S'pose we dig a little trench running away from the brook and then turn on the cock and let the stuff flow off?" suggested Tom.
The idea seemed a good one and they fell to, hewing out a ditch with a couple of sticks. It was a very crude piece of engineering, as Roscoe observed, and they were embarrassed in their work by the gathering darkness, but at length they succeeded, by dint of jabbing and plowing and lifting the earth out in handfuls, in excavating a little gully through the rising bank so that the liquid would flow off and down the rocky decline beyond at a safe distance from the stream.
For upwards of an hour they remained close by, until the hogsheads had run dry, and then they set out through the woods for the captured village.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE GUN PIT
"I think the best way to get into the village," said Roscoe, "is to follow the edge of the wood around. That'll bring us to the by-path that runs into the main road. They've got the woods pretty well cleared out over that way. There's a road a little north of here and I think the Germans have withdrawn across that. What do you say?"
"You know more about it than I do," said Tom. "I followed the brook up. It's pretty bad in some places."
"There's only two of us," said Roscoe, "and you've no rifle. Safety first."