t here again only the weak breathing of his comrade testified to their
plight.

"Better to take the one chance that's left us," muttered Slim to
himself, as he pulled Rawle's revolver from under him, to make sure that
it was fully loaded. "Yes," he continued, "it's better to risk discovery
than this fellow's life."

He took his own automatic from its holster and carefully examined it
also.

Then, with a revolver in either hand, pointing them into the air and
with fourteen shots at his disposal, he began firing.

Bang-Bang-Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang-Bang-Bang!

The shots rang out on the night air like a series of interrupted
explosions. But to the trained ears of the other men of the
party--Lieutenant Mackinson, Joe, Jerry and Frank Hoskins--two miles
away, they carried their call for help.

It was the S O S of the international code, but in a new sort of
wireless--by pistol shots!

Trembling for the results that his desperate action might bring upon
them, Slim waited, bending now and then over the unconscious form of Tom
Rawle.

But in fifteen more minutes his inventive genius was rewarded. From a
considerable distance, but each time more distinctly, now came the
repeated call of "_Whip-poor-will_," and in less time than it seemed
possible that they could make it, the other group had returned.

In low commands the lieutenant then directed affairs, and in exactly the
way that he had been carried out of the hold of the _Everett_ on the
verge of suffocation, so they carried poor Tom Rawle back to their own
lines.

And when he had been placed upon a cot in the first emergency hospital,
Lieutenant Mackinson hurried off to make his report, in the honor of
which all shared.

For not only had they found a location from which to wireless
advance-line communications to field headquarters, but they had also
intercepted a message, knowledge of which resulted in a quick change of
plans by which the Americans were able to beat the enemy at his own game
on the morrow.

"Rawle was suffering more from loss of blood than from any seriousness
of the injury itself," the surgeon told them when they asked there of
their friend's condition, on their way to their own quarters. "He will
be around all right again in a week's time."

And so, much desperate work accomplished on their first night within the
firing lines, the lads threw themselves upon their cots to dream of
spies and captured Germans and injured soldiers and cal