Nearly an hour had gone by, and the boys were beginning to feel the nervous strain. They had examined the breech mechanism of their carbines and counted over the cartridges in their belts a score of times, and they were anxious for active service. A half-suppressed murmur arose.
"Silence in the ranks!" commanded Fred, sternly, as he gazed eagerly over at the signal-station. It was odd, but certainly some kind of a struggle was going on there. Could anything have gone wrong? "Steady!" he said to himself. "Your business, Fred March, is to wait for that white flag, and then we'll see who holds the trumps."
Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes more, and then—surely there was something waving, and it was white. The signal! It was a queer kind of motion, too; the signal-man was acting as though he had suddenly been afflicted with St. Vitus's dance. But it must be the signal. What else could it be?
"By column of fours!" shouted Fred, as he sprang to his saddle. "Attention! Charge!" and as one man the bicycle corps swept down the little hill and out upon the short grass of the golf course.
Fred remembered that his instructions were to regulate his advance by the signal-flag; but surely that frantic waving could mean but one thing, and that was to go on. A moment later and they had swept around the point, and the battle-field was before them. And just in the nick of time, for the "Blacks" were charging across the open, and were already within fifty yards of the "Nob."
"Fire!" shrieked Captain Fred, and a destructive volley was poured in upon the astonished "Blacks," while a cheer went up from the gallant defenders on the "Nob."
The boys could all ride without their hands, and again and again the rifles spoke as the line dashed on. Fred with a squad of twenty of the fastest riders had already made good his position in the rear of "Sebastopol," and before the bewildered artillerymen could turn to meet them the battery had been captured and the guns silenced. The rest of the corps, under command of Alec Jordan, had dismounted, and were firing over their wheels into the broken masses of the "Blacks." In another instant Fred had brought the machine-gun mounted on the "Happy Thought" into action, and the "Blacks," huddled together at the entrance to "Deadman's Hollow," were under three destructive fires.
It was only a question of five minutes, and Colonel Camp's force had been pronounced annihilated by the umpires. The battle was over, and the honors of war rested with Colonel Howard and his gallant "Whites."
Of course they fought the battle all over again at the armory that night, and Lieutenant-Colonel Camp demanded an explanation.
"My dear fellow," said Colonel Howard, soothingly, "it was very clever of you to capture my signal-station; but you forgot that it was possible for me to send a messenger by the wood road."