CHAPTER XVI
A DARING EXPLOIT
Frank leaped out.
"Turn the car around first," he said. Henri obeyed. "Now try yourstarter. Cut out the motor and then see if she starts quickly."
Henri, mystified, obeyed.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because when we want to start, we may have to do it in an awful hurry,"said Frank. He searched the road for a moment. "Run her back a few feetto where that big tree is. It's darker there than anywhere else aroundhere. All right, that's far enough. We'll have to take the chance ofsomething coming along while we're gone and bumping into her but I don'tbelieve there's much risk of that. Now, come on! And quiet! We've got toget up to that place without being seen."
Cautiously they approached the house. No lights showed in any of itswindows; the place looked deserted. Indeed, all around it were tracesof hasty flight. It was a wayside inn, of a type common always inFrance, commoner than ever since the spread of the craze for automobilesand motor touring. Suddenly Frank stopped.
"Wait a minute for me," he said. "I've got to go back to the car. Iought to have thought of it before."
"What do you want?"
"Batteries. I saw a coil of wire in the car and I want that, too. Andthere must be batteries. A car like this would carry everything neededfor small repairs, wouldn't it?"
"Yes. I think you'll find them under my seat."
Frank was back in less than five minutes.
"All right," he said. "I don't know whether we'll have time to do what Iwant or not, and whether I'll be able to do it, anyhow. But it's worthtrying. Now come on past the house. Easy! This is the hardest part ofit."
They slipped by. However, Frank uttered a suppressed exclamation as soonas they had done so. Before them, on the right of the road was a fieldeasily two or three times as large as the ordinary French field. As arule the land in France is split up into very small sections, closelycultivated. But here was a cleared field as large as those commonly seenin England or America, with no fences for perhaps a quarter of a mile inany direction. Henri turned to look back at the inn.
"They're still signalling from there--and look! There are two lightsnow, instead of one, above!"
These lights were still some distance away. Frank studied them. Then heled the way into the field.
"I thought so!" he said, with suppressed triumph in his voice. "Do yousee those barrels over there toward the inn? There's petrol in those--orI'll eat my shirt!"
"And if there is?" said Henri. "What then?"
"Can't you guess? What do you suppose those lights mean?"
"Aeroplanes?"
"Never! They wouldn't flash that way. They'd have to be in a differentposition entirely. No. Dirigibles!"
"Zeppelins?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps Parsevals or Schutte-Lanz airships. I think Parsevals,for they need gasoline. And Zeppelins could fly from Brussels or Liege,almost from Cologne--oh, I have it! That's why they need petrol!"
"Why?"
"They haven't flown over Belgium at all! They are from the sea!"
"Oh--so that they could come secretly, and not be seen as they passedover Belgium?"
"Yes. If they flew over Belgium they would have to cross some territorythat the Germans do not hold, and word would go to Antwerp and fromthere to the army here. Now quickly! They will be here soon. They arecoming nearer every minute."
They went to the barrels as fast as they dared. There was nearly a scoreof them, all close together. Each had a tap, and it was proof enoughthat they contained petrol to open the tap of one. The smell identifiedthem beyond any doubt whatever.
"Come on, and help me dig a hole," said Frank. He dropped to his knees,and began scooping out the soft earth with his hands. Henri fell to witha will, though he was sadly puzzled. But when the hole had been dug to adepth of perhaps two feet, and Frank began to hollow out a trench towardthe barrels he began to understand. And as soon as he did, he worked ashard as Frank himself, careless of torn finger nails and bleeding hands.They carried the trench to the foot of one of the barrels, and Frankturned the tap. The gasoline ran out into the trench, and flowed to thehole. Frank ran back to the hole.
"Stop it when I give the word," he said. "Now!"
Then he was busy with the copper wire he had brought from the automobilefor several minutes. The wire had been carried either to repair cuttelegraph or telephone wires, or to serve as the conductor for a fieldsystem of lighting. But whatever its original purpose had been, Frankwas thankful now that he had found it. He worked fast, and was satisfiedat last.
"Now a little straw and a few twigs over the hole and the trench--andthe sooner they come, the better!"
"Yes, the sooner, the better!" echoed Henri, tremendously excited, nowthat he understood, even if rather vaguely, what Frank planned. "Vive laFrance! A bas les Allemands!"
As they went back toward the road Frank trailed the wire behind him intwo lengths. And when they reached the road, he dropped into the ditch,and was busy for some minutes.
"Now if it only works!" he said. "Perhaps it will; perhaps it won't. Butit can't do any harm. That's certain."
"They're coming closer. I think I can see their shapes now--and thereare two of them," said Henri. "Do you see?"
For a moment Frank could not. Henri's eyes were sharper than his. Butthen he did make out vaguely two immense shapes that were coming throughthe air. Soon, too, the faint hum of their powerful motors made itselfheard.
"Zeppelins and big fellows, too," said Frank. "All the better!"
He wondered if his plan would work, and if he would be able to carry itout. If, in the final test, would he dare to do what he had tried toarrange? Time enough to think of that when the moment for decision came.And meanwhile there were a hundred things that might happen to ruin hisplan. There was nothing to do now but wait. But every moment of waitingbrought the climax nearer. The hum of the motors of the airships roselouder on the quiet air, broken only by the faint and distant mutter ofthe battle that was still being fought miles away. It sounded now likethe buzzing of a swarm of bees, magnified a thousand times. And then thefield was full of men, rushing from the inn. He wondered how they couldhave been concealed there. But such wonder was idle, and he did notthink of it. Instead he watched keenly. First one monstrous aerialbattleship came to rest on the earth. At once the men in the fieldsurrounded her, seizing the ropes that were flung out, and made herfast.
There was a good deal of noise. Men were calling in German of course.But soon order was restored, and the only voices were those givingcommands. Suddenly Frank's face lighted up.
"Did you understand, Henri?" he said. "The men in the field are to bethe crews for the fighting. They have sailed here with only enough mento steer them. And now all are ordered out, to stretch their legs!"
"Yes, I heard that order," said Henri.
"Now keep your eyes glued to them. What are they doing?"
They listened and watched intently.
"Just as I thought," said Frank. "See, they are going to fill the tanks.There, they are attaching hose. And they have a pump--they surely musthave a pump, to send the petrol uphill!"
Meanwhile the other airship had come down, on the other side of thebarrels, and there as nearly as they could judge, the same procedure wascarried out.
"Watch, Henri! Are they pumping?" cried Frank.
"Yes!" said Henri. "Now--now--now is your time, Francois!"
Frank hesitated the fraction of a second.
"If it meant killing them, I could not do it," he said, solemnly. "Butthey are all out of the airships. Now!"
On the word he closed the circuit he had made by connecting the looseends of the wire he had carried from his petrol filled hole to the twobatteries he had brought from the car. He had broken the circuit at theother end, leaving the two wires separated by the fraction of an inch,and cunningly held in place. The result was a spark--or would be, if hehad not erred.
And he had made no mistake! For as he closed the circui
t, he saw aflash of flame at the spot where he and Henri had dug the hole intowhich the petrol had flowed from the barrel they had opened. The sparkhad fired the explosive gas that results when petrol is mixed with air.The flame ran along the shallow trench, and, amid a chorus of shrieksfrom the Germans who scattered in all directions, the fire reached thebarrel. In a moment there was a loud explosion. The flame flew to theother barrels--the whole neighborhood of the barrels, owing to themixture of the petrol and the air, was then filled with an explosive andinflammable gas.
There was a great flash of flame, broken by a dozen sharp reports as onebarrel after another blew up.
And still, though the Germans were flying in all directions, plainlyvisible in the light of the blazing gasoline, the real success ofFrank's plan hung in the balance. But then what he had calculatedhappened. The flame ran through the lines of hose. And a moment latertwo great shafts of flame marked the spread of the fire to the helplessmonsters of the air. There was no chance to save them. Indeed, even theGermans had no other thought than to save their own lives. Their raid,whatever its ultimate object, was ruined and two vessels of the greatair fleet of the Kaiser were destroyed.
For a moment after the final catastrophe the two scouts stayed, caughtby the wonder and the magnificence of the ruin they had wrought. Butthen Frank cried out,
"Come on! We haven't a moment to lose! They'll know that that was noaccident! Some came running this way. They'll find the wires! And thenthey'll know. The wires will bring them here. Hurry!"
They began running desperately toward the automobile.