“Please remember,” said I (for I was getting a little weary of such talk), “that the correspondents have done great work in this war. As for the movies, I’ll show you that I am as good as Douglas Fairbanks himself, for I am going to climb——”
“Scale that dizzy height, you mean,” he taunted; “that’ll sound good in a special article.”
“Indeed!” said I. “Well, then, I am going to ‘scale that dizzy height’ and see where Tom Slade fell, for he came from the little town in Jersey where I belong.”
“You’ll be killed by the Germans,” said he.
“You forget I have my trusty fountain pen with me,” I replied, scathingly.
He tried to dissuade me, saying that when I reached the summit I was just as likely to fall in with the enemy as with our own men and that unless I expected to defeat them single-handed I had better follow the route prescribed by the officers. But I was a free agent in such matters; no charge of desertion or disobedience could be laid against me, and I was resolved that come what might I would take some memento from that lonely spot back to my young friend in America.
Little I thought at the time what that memento would be.
CHAPTER IV
Tells of how I visited the Scuppers, and of the first of two discoveries which I made there.
You are to understand that the road which we had followed from Jonchery appeared from a distance to run straight into this precipitous jungle of rock and broken earth, but a short way from the base it verged to the westward, running through a dense wood and, as our officers were well aware, led up the easy west slope of the hill.