In military parlance, Tom had advanced only to be caught in a pocket. There he sat, astride a large limb, hanging onto the heavy machine, which depended below him just free of the water. He had, with difficulty, moved his painful grip upon a part of the machine's mechanism and succeeded in clutching the edge of the forward wheel. This did not cut his hands so much, but the weight was unbearable in his embarrassed attitude.

Indeed, it was not so much his strength, which was remarkable, that enabled him to keep his hold upon this depending dead weight, as it was sheer desperation. It seemed to be pulling his arms out of their sockets, and his shoulders ached incessantly. At the risk of losing his balance altogether he sought relief by the continual shifting of his position but he knew that the strain was too great for him and that he must let go presently.

It seemed like a mockery that he should have gained the shore only to be caught in this predicament, and to see his trusty machine go tumbling into the water beyond all hope of present recovery, simply because he could not hang on to it.

Well, then, he would hang on to it. He would hang on to it though every muscle of his body throbbed, though his arms were dragged out, and though he collapsed and fell from that limb himself in the last anguish of the aching strain. He and Uncle Sam, having failed, would go down together.

And meanwhile the minutes passed and Uncle Sam and Tom were reflected, inverted, in the water where the spreading light was now flickering. How strange and grotesque they looked, upside down and clinging to each other for dear life and wriggling in the ripples of rushing water. Uncle Sam seemed to be holding him up. It was all the same—they were partners.

He noticed in the water something which he had not noticed before—the reflection of a short, thick, broken branch projecting from the heavy limb he was straddling. He glanced about and found that it was behind him. His stooping attitude, necessitated by the tremendous drag on his arms, prevented him even from looking freely behind him, and in trying to do so he nearly fell. The strain he was suffering was so great that the least move caused him pain.

But by looking into the water he was able to see that this little stub of a limb might serve as a hook on which the machine might be hung if he could clear away the leafy twigs which grew from it, and if he could succeed in raising the cycle and slipping the wheel over it. That would not end his predicament but it would save the machine, relieve him for a few moments, and give him time to think.

For a few moments! They were fleeting by—the moments.

There is a strength born of desperation—a strength of will which is conjured into physical power in the last extremity. It is when the frantic, baffled spirit calls aloud to rally every failing muscle and weakening nerve. It is then that the lips tighten and the eyes become as steel, as the last reserves waiting in the entrenchments of the soul are summoned up to re-enforce the losing cause.

And there in that tree, on the brink of the heedless, rushing waters which crossed the highroad to Dieppe was going to be fought out one of the most desperate battles of the whole war. There, in the mocking light of the paling dawn, Tom Slade, his big mouth set like a vice, and with every last reserve he could command, was going to make his last cast of the dice—let go, give up—or, hold on.

Let go! Of all the inglorious forms of defeat or surrender! To let go! To be struck down, to be taken prisoner, to be——

But to let go! The bulldog, the snapping turtle, seemed like very heroes now.

"He always said I had a good muscle—he liked to feel it," he muttered. "And besides, she said she guessed I was strong."

He was thinking of Margaret Ellison, away back in America, and of Roscoe Bent, as he had known him there. When he muttered again there was a beseeching pathos in his voice which would have pierced the heart of anyone who could have seen him struggling still against fate, in this all but hopeless predicament.

But no one saw him except the sun who was raising his head above the horizon as a soldier steals a cautious look over the trench parapet.

There would be no report of this affair.

He lowered his chest to the limb, wound his legs around it and for a second lay there while he tightened and set his legs, as one will tighten a belt against some impending strain. Not another fraction of an inch could he have tightened those encircling legs.

And now the fateful second was come. It had to come quickly for his strength was ebbing. There is a pretty dependable rule that if you can just manage to lift a weight with both hands, you can just about budge it with one hand. Tom had tried this at Temple Camp with a visiting scout's baggage chest. With both hands he had been barely able to lift it by its strap. With one hand he had been able to budge it for the fraction of a second. But there had been no overmastering incentive—and no reserves called up out of the depths of his soul.

He could feel his breast palpitating against the limb, drawn tight against it by the dead weight. Yet he could not put his desperate purpose to the test.

And so a second—two, three, seconds—were wasted.

"I won't let go," he muttered through his teeth. "I wish I could wipe the sweat off my hand." Then, as if his dogged resolution were not enough, he added, almost appealingly, "Don't you drop and—and go back on me."

Uncle Sam only swung a little in the breeze and wriggled like an eel in the watery mirror.

Slowly Tom loosened his perspiring left hand, not daring to withdraw it. The act seemed to communicate an extra strain to every part of his body. Of all the fateful moments of his life, this seemed to be the most tense. Then, in an impulse of desperation, he drew his left hand away.

"I won't—let—go," he muttered.

The muscles on his taut right arm stood out like cords. His forearm throbbed with an indescribable, pulling pain. There was a feeling of dull soreness in his shoulder blade. His perspiring hand closed tighter around the wheel's rim and he could feel his pulse pounding. His fingers tingled as if they had been asleep. Then his hand slipped a little.