ly as you can, and follow to the letter these
directions: Keep between us and that hill until you get to it. Stay on
this side of the hill and crawl around toward the entrance until you get
to a point where you can place this light, facing us, two feet above the
ground and one foot in from the outer surface extremity. Leave it there
until you see three quick successive rockets go straight up in the air
from here. After that I will give you three minutes in which to get back
to a place of safety. I'll put that flashlight out of business, and I
think I can liberate your friends."

"Is your injury a serious one?" the colonel demanded of Frank.

"Very slight, sir. Only a flesh wound," Frank responded eagerly.

"Then take this light," the colonel ordered, "and follow him at a
distance of a hundred yards. If anything should happen to your friend,
you follow the directions you have just heard."

"Yes, sir," the lads responded in unison, and, with a hasty salute, were
off.

Three times did Joe drop to the ground, as a shadow seemed to move
somewhere out in the distance before him. But each time he was up and
off again almost upon the instant, thinking of his own safety only as
that of his three friends depended upon it.

And what of those inside?

Even the courageous Lieutenant Mackinson was beginning to show the
anxiety he felt, while Jerry and Slim, despite their bravest efforts,
gave way to occasional expressions of the horror of the thing.

They had pounded upon the walls until they had been overcome with
despair, and then they had set to work digging with the only instruments
at hand--the bayonets on the German rifles.

But soon they realized that this, too, was as hopeless as the pounding,
for it further exhausted the energy which the foul air was rapidly
sapping, without making any apparent opening in the thick earthen wall
that surrounded them.

"Well," said Slim at last, gulping back his nausea, and smiling almost
in his old time way, "I'm as anxious as anybody to keep up hope to the
last. But if this is to be our end, I guess we can face it as Americans
should."

"Bravo!" exclaimed Lieutenant Mackinson, "I always knew that each one of
you fellows had the right sort of stuff in you."

And Jerry, too, slapped him affectionately on the back.

"Slim," he said, smiling over at his chum, and ready for his pun, even
under such circumstances, "my head is feeling a 'trifle heavy,' but I'm
game to stand up to th