In following up this method of fighting, the three Army Boys were separated. Frank found himself in a shell hole alone. He peered over the edge and could see nothing of Tom and Billy. He crouched low in the hole, reloading his rifle. Then he took stock of his position. About three hundred feet ahead of him was a machine gun nest that was spitting bullets in a steady stream. It was sheltered by a barricade of logs about four feet high. Behind this the German machine gunners were snugly ensconced and seemed to defy capture. They kept slewing their gun from side to side of the barricade so that it commanded the whole front of the position, and their bullets went hissing over the open space like so many snakes and quite as deadly. Frank pondered as to what he should do and a wild thought came into his mind. At least it would have seemed wild at the beginning of his experience in the war. But he had taken so many risks and gotten away with them that he had grown inclined to trust his luck. He was going to put that particular machine gun out of business. But how could he do it single-handed? They could fire a hundred bullets to his one. His keen eye studied the ground in front of him. There were perhaps half a dozen shell holes between him and the barricade. But they were too far apart for him to slip from one to another without being seen. And to be seen in that bullet swept place meant certain death. But he also noted another thing. A heavy German field gun from a distance of miles behind the lines was sending huge shells that were falling with tolerable regularity in the space between him and the barricade. Every minute or two, a shell would explode with a tremendous roar, sending a volume of black smoke and tons of dirt into the air. Here was the solution of Frank’s problem. He measured the distance between him and the next shell hole, and poised himself for a spring when the next shell should fall. It came, and on the instant Frank was out of his hole and rushing toward the next behind the screen of smoke and dirt. He dropped into it and waited for the next shell. Several times this was repeated, until at last Frank found himself in the last shell hole less than fifty feet away from the barricade. This was his limit of possible shelter. The rest of the way he must be in the open. He crouched low in the hole, waiting for a favorable moment. Just at that time bullets were whistling directly above his head. But he had noted that the gunners were sweeping their gun about in a semicircle, so as to command all portions of the open space, and he knew that in a moment or two the line of fire would be on one side or the other of the direct line that lay between him and the barricade. How many men there might be in the machine gun crew he did not know. There would surely be two, perhaps half a dozen. He did not greatly care. In that moment of intense exaltation he would have fought a regiment.