Boy Scouts -- Juvenile fiction; Courage -- Juvenile fiction; Spy stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- England -- Juvenile fiction
Was it just a few moments since he had urged, even commanded Dick Mercer
to leave him, caught in a trap set for just such trespassers as they?
Had he urged his chum to leave him in his agony, for the ankle was badly
wrenched, and seek safety in flight? For it was Harry Fleming, hero of
"A Boy Scout’s Daring," whom we now find listening in an agony of fear
rather than of pain to such sounds as came to him after Dick had, so
reluctantly, left him pinned in the trap. He could hear, plainly
enough, the advance of the two searchers who had scared Dick into hiding
in the rhododendron bush; he could even see the gleam of their
flashlights, and was able, therefore, to guess what they were doing.
For the moment it seemed impossible to him that Dick should escape.
As to himself, he was quite sure that he would be captured in a few
minutes, and, as a matter of fact, there were things that made the
prospect decidedly bearable. The pain in his ankle from the trap in
which he had been caught was excruciating. It seemed to him that he
must cry out, but he kept silence resolutely. As long as there was a
chance that he might not fall into the hands of the spies who were
searching the grounds, he meant to cling to it.
But the chance was a very slim one, as he knew. He could imagine,
without difficulty, just about what the men with the flashlights would
do, by reasoning out his own course. They would look for footprints.
These would lead them to the spot where he and Dick had watched the
raising of the wireless mast, and thence along the path they had taken
to return to the wall and to safety. Thus they would come to him, and
he would be found, literally like a rat in a trap.
And then, quite suddenly, came the diversion created by Dick’s daring
dash for escape, when he sped from the bush and climbed the wall,
followed by the bullets that the searchers fired after him. Harry
started, hurting his imprisoned ankle terribly by the wrench his sudden
movement gave it. Then he listened eagerly for the cry he dreaded yet
expected to hear, that would tell him that Dick had been hit. It did
not come. Instead, he heard more men running, and then in a moment all
within the wall was quiet, and he could hear the hue and cry dying away
as they chased him along the road outside.
"Well, by Jove!" he said to himself, enthusiastically, "I believe Dick’s
fooled them! I didn’t think he had it in him! That’s bully for him!
He ought to get a medal for that!"
It was some moments before he realized fully that he had gained a
respite, temporarily, at least. Obviously the two men who had been
searching with flashlights had followed Dick; there was at least a good
chance that no one else knew about him. He had decided that there was
some system of signal wires that rang an alarm when a trap was sprung.
But it might be that these two men were the only ones who were supposed
to follow up such an alarm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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