Dale was at one with the soldiers in desire for reprisals, but Max was dead against the whole idea. It was not that he was less indignant at the cruel wrong just inflicted upon innocent peasants, but he feared that any more such acts would react upon the country people in precisely the same manner. A reprisal which brought fresh trouble upon yet another set of innocent folk would, he felt, be worse than useless, and he spoke his mind freely to Corporal Shaw on the subject.

"You've done no good," he ended, "by attacking the line and tearing up a few rails. Your methods were too wild to bring about any real damage. All you have done is to make it additionally hard for me to get you safely out of the country."

"Humph!" grunted the Corporal rather sourly. "I know you've done some neat little things in LiÉge, but could you manage a better affair out here? I give you leave to try. As for getting us out, I don't see much prospect of that coming off, my lad."

"I'll get you out if you'll drop all these wild-cat exploits," replied Max firmly. "Is it a bargain?"

The Corporal consulted with his men for a few minutes. "No," he said, shaking his head emphatically, "the men refuse to sneak out of the country before they have what they call redressed the wrong done those poor villagers. They want one more good cut at the Germans to make that good, and then they are ready to make tracks for home, if you think you can get us there."

"Will you let me plan the reprisal attack as well as arrange to get you out?" asked Max quickly.

The Corporal opened his eyes a little.

"So you do think you can do better? Well, I don't mind; you shall plan the reprisal and then get us out of the mess. Done!"

"Done!" replied Max firmly, and it was thus settled that he should, from that time forward, practically take command of the little band, subject only to the stipulation that the escape should not be arranged until the Germans had been made to pay, and pay handsomely, for their recent exhibition of brutality.

As soon as that was decided, Max changed the direction of the retreat to due east, and in that direction they continued all day. When night fell, the men looked about them for a comfortable spot to sleep, but Max would not allow them to stop, and, with frequent halts for rest, they continued on their way all through the night. There was some grumbling, but it was soon silenced; and, when all was said and done, the men recognized that Max managed to feed them fairly well. This part of the business he saw to himself. At nearly every farm-house he passed he managed to purchase some food. None of the soldiers were allowed to come within sight of the people, and, with this precaution, and his knowledge of the language, he hoped that no suspicions of the destination of the food would be aroused.

During the following day the band hid themselves in a copse and slept. It was nearly dark when Max aroused them and told them they must go on.

"We've been travelling a good many miles, lad," remarked Shaw carelessly. "Where are we now?"

"In Germany," replied Max.

"Germany!" cried the Corporal, his carelessness vanishing. "Why—what d'ye mean? D'ye think we want to find a good safe prison?"

"No. Your men insist on one more attack on the Germans, as a reprisal for the burning of the village. Well, we cannot do anything in Belgium, for it would only mean another village burned. If we make the attack in Germany it will be different. They can hardly burn down their own villages."

Corporal Shaw held out his hand. "Well done, lad!" he cried heartily, and the other men within ear-shot echoed his words. "That's a stroke of genius, and we are with you to a man. What are you going to attack—nothing less than Metz, of course?"

Max smiled and shook his head. "Something a little less ambitious will have to do, I think. After another night march we shall be on the spot, and can get to work."

"What are you going to do, lad?"

Max hesitated a moment. Should he keep the men ignorant of the nature of the enterprise until the hour for it had struck? It was hardly worth while—in forty-eight hours or so it would be all over.

"To block the main line between Aix and LiÉge," he answered simply.

"Phew! I think you mentioned wild-cat exploits the other day. What sort of cat exploit is this?"

"It must be carefully planned beforehand."

"Humph! Trains filled with troops passing every five minutes; the lines thick with guards. It'll want careful planning—and a trifle more. In fact, it'll need the devil's own luck. What say you, boys?"

"No matter, Corp," cried Peck testily. "Give the lad his head. We ain't particular, so long as it's a fust-class scrap."

"It'll be all that," grunted Shaw.

"Did we expect to git out of this show alive?" retorted Peck. "What's the odds? Let the lad 'ave his way—he's grubbed us well anyhow."

The other men murmured an assent, and it was clear that most of the band were quite ready to follow Max in an attempt, however desperate, on the Germans' main line of communication. The Frenchmen were quite ready to agree to anything that would lead to another encounter with the enemy in company with their British comrades, and so Max was left in possession of the field and charged with full responsibility for the tremendous task before them.

Two days later the whole of the band arrived safely within a mile or so of the great main line which runs between Aix-la-Chapelle and LiÉge, and then on through Namur to Paris. A stoppage to their communications on this line would disconcert the Germans in a way that hardly anything else could do, and Max, from the knowledge he had gained, while at LiÉge, of the great trains loaded with troops and munitions that constantly passed through at all hours of the day and night, was very well aware of it. Next to his darling scheme for the frustration of the Germans' plans as regards the Durend works, the breaking of the great railway through the town had seemed the most serious blow that could be aimed at the Germans by a few men working independently of the great military forces of the Allies. It was a difficult matter, but not impossible. That was enough.

Max and Dale, accompanied by Shaw, reconnoitred the railway after hiding their men well away out of sight. The first point reached Max did not consider suitable, and it was not until they had approached the line at several different places that he found a spot that satisfied him. This spot was one where the line passed along a fairly deep cutting, the sides of which were thickly overgrown with bushes with here and there a young tree. It was a spot at which it would be easy to approach the line unseen. And yet this was not Max's chief reason for selecting it. His design had been to find a spot where the line at night-time would have dark patches of shadow cast upon it here and there.

Dale and Corporal Shaw now returned to the spot where the band had been left in hiding, while Max set out for Aix-la-Chapelle alone. He still wore the workman's clothes in which he had masqueraded for so long, and, with his excellent knowledge of the German tongue, he had little to fear so long as he took care not to blunder into a military patrol. Without misadventure he reached Aix, and purchased a dozen spanners similar to those used by plate-layers, except that the handles were short and lacked the great leverage necessary for their work. This difficulty would, however, be easily got over by cutting stout rods from the woods and lashing them to the short spanners. The tools thus obtained would, he knew, be fully suited to the end in view.

The reconnoitring of the railway had disclosed the fact that the guards were stationed only about eighty yards apart. Also that they were changed every four hours, at four o'clock, eight o'clock, midnight, and noon.

An hour before midnight Max led the band towards the line at the point fixed upon. He had already, at some pains, explained exactly what he desired each man to do, and from their intelligent eagerness felt pretty well assured that they would not fail from want of zeal or knowledge of the part they had to play. To the Frenchmen he, of course, explained matters in their own tongue, and found them equally as ready as their Island brethren.

The moon, what there was of it, was fairly low in the heavens, and the long shadows Max counted upon so largely in his plans were much in evidence. Silence was another factor of importance, and the feet of all the men were swathed in long strips of cloth—their puttees in the case of the British soldiers, and strips from their clothing in the case of the Frenchmen.

The band was divided into three groups, and the orders were that on arriving at the edge of the cutting all were to remain motionless in hiding until the guards were changed at midnight. Then three men from each band were to creep up close to one of the three sentries marked down for attack, and wait for an opportunity to seize and kill or capture him without raising an alarm.

The latter point Max insisted upon as of the utmost importance. The groups of three might spend two hours, even three hours, he told them, so long as they performed their task without making a noise that would attract the attention of the sentries on either side. The darkness of the line, from the shadows of the trees and bushes and the deepness of the cutting itself, Max felt he could rely upon to prevent the other sentries from seeing if aught were amiss. The important thing, therefore, was that they should perform their task without noise.

Promptly at midnight the sentries were changed. The momentary bustle was, as arranged carefully beforehand by Max, taken advantage of by the groups of three to creep close up to their objectives. Then things settled down again in quietude. All was peaceful and silent between the thunder of the trains, and time was allowed the sentries to grow accustomed to their surroundings and to develop any individual habits of carelessness that might be theirs. At first the men marched to and fro rather frequently. Later, they contented themselves with leaning on their rifles and making themselves as comfortable as such a position would allow. There had been no attacks on any part of the line in Germany so far as had become known, and there was no reason in the world why these line guards should expect one now.

One of the sentries presently came to a halt in the shadow cast by a tree. He was thus out of sight of his comrades on either side, and the three men in deadly attendance upon him were satisfied that their chance had come. Noiselessly emerging from the shadows, they stole upon him from behind. One seized him by the throat in a grip of iron, stifling all utterance, another pinioned his arms to his sides, while the third caught the rifle which fell from his startled hand. Between the three the struggles of the unfortunate sentry were quickly mastered. He was securely pinioned, gagged, and dragged out of harm's way into the shelter of the bushes.

The capture of one made the capture of the two others comparatively easy. It was only necessary to await a moment when the farther sentinel was facing away from the next man marked down for attack, before springing upon him. One after the other the three guards were successfully placed out of action, and the stern work of reprisal was at hand.

As a precautionary measure, two men, wearing the tunics and helmets of the captured Germans, were stationed as sentries one at each end of the break, to satisfy their German neighbours in case they should miss the sight of the comrades who had gone.

Then rapidly Max selected two pairs of rails, one pair on the up-line and one on the down-line, and the dozen great spanners were quickly at work. Certain of the nuts of the rails and of some of the chairs were carefully loosened a little, and everything was made ready to shift one end of each rail as soon as the signal should be given. Then the men withdrew once more to the obscurity of the bushes.

Having satisfied himself that everything was in readiness, Max settled himself to watch the trains as they passed, and to seize upon the essential moment. Trains were now running less frequently than at every hour in the twenty-four, and in the comparative silence he could tell when a train was approaching while it was yet some miles away. It was his intention to await the almost simultaneous approach of two trains from opposite directions, and in steady patience he waited.

His men did not know the full extent of his plans and were impatient to see the result of their—to them—successful labours. They could not understand this halt, and grumbled under their breath at the strange hesitancy of their young leader. But everything had gone so well under his guidance that none of them dared to express his discontent aloud, and Max was left to put the finishing touch upon his plans in peace.

Suddenly his ear caught the sounds he had been awaiting.

"Forward!" he commanded in an undertone in two languages.

The men sprang quickly on to the lines and wrestled with the nuts and bolts with all their might. In a very short space of time the rails were loose at one end and the chairs removed. Then Max gave the word for all four rails to be levered inwards, towards the centre of the track, until the loose ends were a foot out of line with the other rails.

The chairs were then roughly refixed at the extreme ends of the sleepers, and the bent rails bolted as firmly as possible in their new positions. While this was being done the four rails next the gaps were unbolted and entirely removed. When all was done there was a break 40 feet long in each track, and the pair of rails on the side from which the trains were approaching had been bent inwards, and now pointed towards the corresponding pair on the other track, thus:—

For the first time the men now understood the whole significance of the work they were doing. They had known enough of their young leader's plans to expect much, but now they expected a great deal more and moved off the track full of suppressed excitement and jubilation. Like a pistol-shot it had come to them that the brutal destruction of the poor village beyond Bastogne was about to be very amply revenged indeed.

The rumble of the two trains approaching from opposite directions was now drawing very close, and the men hung about in the bushes, a few yards up the side of the cutting, watching eagerly for any sign that the drivers had seen the short breaks in the line and were bringing their trains to a standstill. But there was no sign of this. The trains approached at a steady speed, and the drivers, if on the look-out, noticed nothing amiss in the patches of deeper shadow in the half darkness of the gloomy cutting.

The two trains reached the fatal spot almost at the same moment. Both followed the direction of the tampered rails and left the track with a bumping grind that made those who heard it shudder. Then they collided with a crash that could be heard for miles. The engines reared up almost on end—as though in a desperate attempt to leap over one another—and rolled over on their sides. Behind them the great wagons still drove on and piled themselves up on high in a welter of hideous confusion.

The noise, the confusion, the sense of dire destruction, were almost paralysing; but, almost without being conscious of it, Max found himself eagerly scanning the wrecked wagons to see what they contained. The "bag" was one sufficient to satisfy the most ardent patriot. The trucks, or some of them, of the train bound outwards to LiÉge clearly contained the guns of several heavy batteries. Those of the inward train were filled with machinery and other stores filched from the great Belgian workshops and being transferred to Germany to set up fresh works there. A few of the trucks of the inward train appeared to contain shells, and these Max marked down as the point for the final attack.

The noise of the collision, of course, brought all the men guarding the line, within hearing, hurrying to the scene. None of them, or of the survivors of those on the trains, had any thought that the catastrophe was anything but an accident, and no attempt was made to search for possible enemies. Most of the German soldiers, indeed, flung down their weapons and busied themselves in the task of extricating men and horses from the piles of overturned wagons.

Thus when again, at Max's signal, the band of British and French soldiers left their hiding-places they were able, in the darkness, to mingle with the Germans and go about their final work almost unchallenged. In only two instances were German officers or non-commissioned officers inconveniently inquisitive, and those difficulties were solved by an instant attack with the bayonet. Even these conflicts were insufficient to attract special attention amid the general turmoil. Any who noticed the actions might readily enough have concluded that they were the result of a quarrel or of some demented victim of the accident attacking an imaginary foe.

The work which still kept Max and his auxiliaries on the dangerous scene of their successful exploit was that of bringing down great bundles of straw and dead wood, prepared some time beforehand, from the top of the railway cutting where they had been hidden in readiness. The wagons, which Max had ascertained to be indeed full of shells, were what they were after, and against these the bundles were piled. Almost unmolested the exulting men made all ready for the final blow which should set the seal upon their terrible reprisal.

And yet, when it came to the point, Max hesitated to give the order to fire the pyre. There might yet be some unfortunate men pinned alive beneath the wreckage, and he was unwilling to add to their miseries the dreadful fate of being burned alive. For ten, fifteen, and almost twenty minutes he waited, until he could feel satisfied that none were likely still to remain alive beneath the pile. His own men indeed, well knowing what was coming, had busied themselves in dragging out their fallen foes from the certain fate which would otherwise have befallen them, forgetting their desire for reprisals in their pity for wounded and helpless men.

At last the moment arrived. Max gave the word, the straw was fired, and the band beat a hasty retreat to the shelter of the bushes on the north side of the cutting.

A loud cry of warning and alarm arose from the German soldiers as the flames shot up into the air, illuminating the track for many yards around. A harsh command rang out, and a number of men dashed forward to beat or stamp out the flare.

"Those men must be kept away, Corporal," cried Max quickly. "We must not leave until the fire has got firm hold."

"Bayonets, men," cried Corporal Shaw sharply. "Get ready to charge home."

"No, no, Corporal," cried Max, seizing him by the arm; "no bayonet fighting this round. Keep them away by rifle-fire from the bushes. They know nothing of us now; let them remain as ignorant as possible."

"Right. Ten rounds, rapid, boys! Ready! present! fire!"

The Germans had barely reached the fire and begun to pull away the burning faggots, when a sudden and withering hail of bullets swept down upon them. Half of them fell at once, and the remainder recoiled in confusion and doubt. Fire seemed to spit from the darkness all about them, and none knew for the moment whether they were in the presence of a foe, or whether a detachment of their own men, but just arrived, had taken them for enemy wreckers. Long before the officer in command could rally his men, push out scouts to ascertain the cause of the rifle-fire, and set the main body to resume their task, the fire had caught such firm hold that it was obvious to all that at any moment the shells might explode.

A general stampede away from the vicinity of the burning wagons ensued, and at a respectful distance the discomfited Germans gazed at the fire or occupied themselves in firing in the direction apparently taken by their unseen foes.

Suddenly, with an ear-splitting roar, the shells exploded. The concussion was tremendous, and huge showers of shells, broken bits of wagons, gravel, and flaming wood fell heavily in all directions. Many of those looking on were killed outright by the avalanche of falling material, and the remainder fled in mad panic from the deadly scene.

Max had already withdrawn his men beyond the edge of the cutting and marched them a couple of hundred yards farther down the line. The explosion caused them no casualties beyond a few minor cuts and bruises, and, with one last look at the track beneath them, they turned their backs upon the place and marched silently away towards the Dutch frontier.

The work of reprisal for a foul deed was done. Where the explosion had taken place an enormous crater had been torn in the permanent way. Beyond that the line was blocked by great piles of tangled wreckage which must have weighed hundreds of tons—Krupp guns and gun mountings, twisted almost out of all recognition, masses of machinery ruined beyond redemption, and engines, wagons, rails, and sleepers piled high in inextricable confusion. Many hours, if not days, of unremitting toil would be needed before the line could be reopened for traffic. Thus the main lines of communication of the Germans were severed and a heavy blow struck for the cause of the Allies.

On the trunk of a tree, at the top of the cutting close by, a notice was fixed: "In reprisal for the burning of an innocent village above Bastogne."