Chapter XIV: The Hikiotoshi

The village appeared to be full of wounded. Some were being attended to by doctors on the spot, others were sent to the rear in motor ambulances as fast as these could be brought up. The Rutlands learnt that their attack on the village had been only one incident in operations that had extended for several miles along the front, and which had resulted in a certain gain of ground. The German trenches had been stormed, and the enemy thrown back for a considerable distance.

During the morning a motor despatch rider came in with a message from the general of division. An immediate answer was required, which Colonel Appleton at once proceeded to write, while Captain Adams questioned the cyclist on what he had seen in the course of his ride. The divisional headquarters was at a village some fifteen miles to the north-east as the crow flies, but the route taken by the cyclist, well behind the British lines, was almost twice that distance. He had been instructed to return the same way. It occurred to Captain Adams, however, that much time would be saved if a more direct route were followed, and he suggested that the colonel should take advantage of the change in position resulting from the forward movement and the confusion in the German lines, to send his message along a road that ran from the captured village in the rear of what had been the enemy's trenches.

"That's all very well," said the colonel, "but in the first place this man is ordered to go back the same way, and in the next we have no other cycles or cyclists."

"We have a couple of cycles," said the captain. "Don't you remember, sir, we sent a requisition to the base for a couple of new machine guns and by some blunder or other they sent us two motor cycles instead?"

"And we still have them?"

"Oh yes! We shall have to keep them until someone discovers that they are missing and ultimately finds out their whereabouts. And I've no doubt we've several men who can ride."

"There's a further consideration. The road you mention is now between our firing line and the enemy's. It will be decidedly unhealthy."

"A little risky, no doubt; but by all accounts the Germans have been thrown back some distance, and they'll be too busy consolidating their new position to be very dangerous to-day. I daresay there'll be snipers here and there, but they're not very successful at running targets. I'd suggest that you triplicate your despatch: send one copy by this man the long way, and two at short intervals by the direct road. You'd make sure of it thus."

"Well, I'll 'phone to the front and discover how the land lies. In the meantime see if you can find riders. If it appears reasonably safe I'll adopt your suggestion: it will save half an hour or more."

The captain at once hurried to the Bonnards' cottage. "Amory's a likely man," he thought.

The upshot was that when the official despatch rider was returning to headquarters by the long way round, Kenneth and Harry were speeding along the road north-eastward. Harry was the first to start; Kenneth followed at a minute's interval, just keeping his friend in sight. Their orders were to let nothing interfere with or delay the delivery of the despatch. If any accident happened, if either of them was hit by a sniper's bullet, there must be no question of helping the other.

Before starting they had attentively studied a large-scale map of the district. The colonel's information had shown the impossibility of attempting to reach headquarters without leaving the direct road. This lay, for about half the distance, between the new fronts of the opposing forces, but it then crossed the new position which the Germans were believed to be entrenching, and ran for several miles behind it. There was, however, a by-road forking to the left just before the halfway point was reached, and this opened into a bridle track leading in the right direction. By making this slight detour they would lose a mile or two, but they might hope to incur no more danger than they were bound to risk in the early part of the journey.

"Barring accidents, we shall save a good deal more time than the colonel thinks," said Kenneth, as he folded the map. "The way the other fellow has gone is sure to be congested with traffic: this will be clear."

"I hope so," replied Harry, "but don't forget there's been an action. The road is probably half pits. Well, I go first then; if I come a cropper, take warning and scoot."

At the outset the road was not so bad as he had expected, and he was able to run the machine at a pace of nearly forty miles an hour without much risk. There were few marks of gun fire, no doubt because the road followed the bottom of an indentation over which the shells had passed. But after a time it rose, and the ground fell away on each side, and Harry was warned of the necessity of reducing speed by a sudden jolt that made him bite his tongue. From that moment he had to watch every yard of the road. Sometimes on the left, sometimes in the centre, sometimes on the right, yawned a shell pit deep enough to bury a wagon. Presently he had to pick his way through a litter of broken rifles, helmets, haversacks, all sorts of articles of equipment, evidently dropped or thrown aside by the Germans in their disordered flight the day before. Time was so important that, even now, he rode at a speed that would have seemed lunacy to a motorist with a proper respect for springs and bearings, avoiding only dangerous holes, and riding over most of the obstacles. His progress was a succession of jolts and jerks that threatened to dislocate the machine, and he afterwards wondered that it had not broken down under the strain.

He came into the by-road. This, being at a lower level than the road he had left, had not suffered so much from shells; on the other hand, it was scored with ruts and soft with mud, into which the wheels now and then sank several inches. He was beset now by a constant fear of skidding, and annoyed by splashes of mud on his face.

"It might be worse," he thought. "Lucky they are not bullets."

So far, it was clear, he had not been seen by the snipers whom Captain Adams had mentioned as the greatest risk of the journey. The ground on either side rolled away in gentle undulations. There was neither house nor living creature in sight. Guns were booming in the far distance, but though he knew that there were thousands of invisible soldiers on each side of him, nothing on the face of the country indicated a state of war.

Topping a rise, he came to a ruined hamlet in which not a single cottage was whole. Beyond this branched the bridle track that led to his destination. It was a lane no more than four feet wide, between hedges, and thick with slimy mud. It wound and twisted in an erratic and seemingly purposeless manner, and but for the evidence of the map he had conned Harry would have had no confidence in its general direction.

Suddenly he heard the characteristic scream of a shell not far ahead. Immediately afterwards the deep boom of a heavy gun came from his right. The German gunners had started work. In a few seconds there was rolling thunder on each side of him; it was evident that a violent artillery duel was in progress. The hedges prevented him from seeing anything; but reflecting that the gunners were aiming at each other's positions he was not disturbed about his own safety.

He had just turned an awkward corner, narrowly avoiding a sideslip, and was congratulating himself on a few yards of straight track and a widening that gave hope of reaching an open road, when, amid the sound of guns, he caught another sound, which at first he mistook for the whirr of an aeroplane. In a moment, however, he recognised his error. It was the purring of a motor bicycle, and in front, approaching him. Almost as soon as he knew this, the machine came in sight at the far corner, perhaps a hundred yards away, running at no great speed. At the first glance he saw that the rider was a German; at the second that the German was not unprepared to meet him. He realised afterwards that, the wind being with him, the noise of his own swiftly running engine must have been heard first.

Each had only a few moments to decide what to do. The German, the instant he recognised the approaching rider as a British soldier, screwed on his brakes, turned the bicycle across the lane, sprang off and drew a revolver, no doubt expecting that the Englishman would swerve at the obstacle, be forced into the hedge, and present an easy target. His reasoning, if such it was, would have been sound enough had it not proceeded from a faulty estimate of the English mind--an error into which the Germans have been betrayed many times since the Kaiser made his initial blunder in the same kind. The German is a master of the obvious, and imagines that what he would do is the best thing to be done, and that an Englishman will do it badly.

Harry, however, was not committed by training or habit to either of the obvious courses: to allow himself to be forced into the hedge, or to stop dead and fight the German on foot. It seemed to him, in those few seconds that he had for deciding, better to clear the way for Kenneth, who, no doubt, was not far behind. A spill would at any rate not hurt his feelings, as it might a German's. Accordingly, instead of applying the brakes, he opened the throttle, and bracing himself for the shock, drove his machine at ever-increasing speed straight for the enemy.

This, of course, from the German point of view, was English madness. Still, it was unexpected, and when the German fired, at the distance of twenty paces, his aim was flurried by his natural surprise, and by the sudden realisation that his machine would certainly be smashed. Dropping his revolver, and shouting something that was far from complimentary, he tried to pull his bicycle clear; but his action was not only too late; like so many well-meant efforts to prevent mischief, it furthered it. His movement of a few inches caused Harry's bicycle to strike the hub of the driving wheel instead of the middle of the machine, for which he was steering. Harry was flung over the handle-bars into the hedge, a few feet in advance of the bicycles, which lay mangled together, and not quite so far from the German, who had very luckily escaped being crushed beneath them.

The two men staggered to their feet almost at the same moment, bruised and shaken, but equally unconscious of their hurts. The German, with his cultivated instinct, fumbled for his revolver, remembered it was on the ground out of reach, and was drawing his sword-bayonet when Harry, in the British way, flung himself upon him. And when Kenneth, half a minute later, drawn up at speed by the sound of the crash, came upon the scene, he beheld with mingled amazement and concern two military figures, begrimed with mud, struggling on the ground. The figure in grey was undermost.

"Go on!" shouted Harry. "I've got the Hikiotoshi on him."

Kenneth had slowed down, but remembering the captain's injunction, and seeing that his friend was well able to take care of himself, he opened out and in a few seconds was pushing along at as high a speed as the greasy lane permitted. He could not help smiling at the recollection of his own bewilderment and naive indignation when, in one of his early lessons in jujutsu from Mr. Kishimaru, he had found both legs suddenly swept from under him, and heard the Japanese, beaming down upon him, gently remark:

"That, my dear sir, is the Hikiotoshi."

Kenneth's experiences along the road had been identical with Harry's. But a few seconds after he had left the scene of the collision he had reason to wonder, for the first time, whether he would ever reach his destination. The bridle track opened into a road that intersected a stretch of plain. It had suffered hardly at all from shells; being on a higher level than the bridle track it was fairly dry and gave a better surface for riding; but it was fully exposed on either hand, without protection of hedge or dyke; and anyone passing along it must be in full view for a considerable distance left and right. And Kenneth found that he had run into the very centre of the artillery duel the sounds of which he had heard for some minutes. Shells whizzed over his head in both directions. Bang to the left of him, boom to the right of him, and above him shriek and moan in various tones. And in the midst of the broken sounds came the continuous hum of an aeroplane somewhere in the neighbourhood.

Neither the German nor the British batteries were visible. Kenneth indeed did not look round for their flashes or the smoke from the bursting shells. Bending forward over the handle-bars he raced on, congratulating himself that, his course being probably midway between the distant batteries, the gunners on each side were too intent on searching the hostile position to concern themselves about a solitary cyclist careering across their front at a shorter range. But he knew that between him and the guns infantry were watching in their trenches, perhaps awaiting the order to advance, and at any moment he might find himself caught between two fires.

He was not long left in doubt whether he had been seen. From the right a bullet sang across the road. It was a single shot, from the rifle of some sniper concealed somewhere in advance of the German lines. At a speed of fifty miles an hour he must be a difficult target even for the most expert of marksmen, and he hoped that speed would save him. Another shot whistled by his ear; that was a narrow escape, he thought; but there had been no volley from the German trenches: apparently he had not been seen except by the sniper, and it was only a stream of shot from rifles or machine guns that he had to fear.

Presently, however, he was startled by a loud explosion near at hand on his left; glancing round, he saw a column of earth and smoke rise from the ground. "That's a shell from a field-gun," he thought. "The Germans have spotted me, and are trying their hand." Another shell burst on his right, close enough to bespatter him with earth. A few seconds afterwards there was a shattering explosion on the same side, of such force that the concussion of the air alone was sufficient to hurl his machine sideways. Uncontrollably it mounted a low bank on the left, jumped a ditch, tore a furrow through the heavy soil, then stopped slowly and turned over.

Kenneth picked himself up, covered with dirt but unharmed. He looked at the fallen machine. Both wheels were buckled; from one the tyre had been ripped off; the bicycle was damaged beyond repair. A shell bursting within a hundred yards sent him scrambling into a ditch, where he rested for a few moments to collect himself. The German gunners were apparently satisfied; the firing ceased.

"Scuppered, and with only a few miles to go," he thought. "Both of us! The long way will prove to be the shortest after all."

After a little consideration he came to the conclusion that there was still a chance of arriving first at headquarters by making his way along the ditch parallel with the road. In any case he must attempt it, for the third rider might have met with an accident: his clear duty was to go on and deliver the despatch. He was farther from his destination than he supposed, and it would probably have taken him an hour to reach it on foot. But he set off along the bottom of the ditch, sinking sometimes over his ankles in slime and water.

Some twenty minutes afterwards he was surprised to hear another series of explosions on the road behind him. A little later the wind carried towards him the purr of a motor bicycle. It was rapidly approaching; the crash of bursting shells came nearer and nearer. Was the rider a friend or an enemy? It could not be either Harry or the German he had met, for he had seen at a glance as he passed by that their machines were crippled. He was bound to be discovered; the ditch, while deep enough to conceal him from the gunners in the distance, would not hide him from anyone passing along the road, even if he lay flat in the filthy ooze. He drew the revolver which Captain Adams had lent him, resolving to get his shot in first.

Only a few seconds elapsed between his hearing the sound and the appearance of the bicycle round a curve in the road behind. The rider was in khaki; he was flat over the handle-bars; the machine seemed to leap along the road. It flashed by, and Kenneth, crouching over the ditch, was amazed to see that the rider was Harry. Whether his friend had recognised him he could not tell. Quite oblivious of the shells that were still bursting on and near the road, he watched the bicycle's breakneck career until it passed under a bank that protected it from the German guns, turned a corner, and disappeared. Next moment there was a crash behind him; he was conscious for the fraction of a second of sharp blows on every part of his body; then he knew no more.