spurts of unobstructed speed.

Then suddenly the wire caught fast, and his machine stopped and strained
like a restive horse, the power wheel racing furiously. Hurriedly he
looked behind him where the sinuous wire lay along the road, far
back--as far as he could see, across the trampled entanglements and
trenches. Where were the others who were to help carry it over? Killed?

Alone in the open area of No Man's Land, Tom Slade paused for an instant
to think. What should he do?

Suddenly there appeared out of a shell hole not twenty feet ahead of him
a helmeted figure. It rose up grimly, uncannily, like a dragon out of
the sea, and levelled a rifle straight at him. So that was the lair of
the sharpshooter!

Tom was not afraid. He knew that he had been facing death and he was not
afraid of what he had been facing. He knew that the sharpshooter had him
at last. Neither he nor the wire were going to bear any message back.

"Anyway, I'm glad I wrote that letter," he muttered.

[Illustration: TOM WAS SURPRISED TO FIND HIMSELF UNINJURED, WHILE THE
BOCHE COLLAPSED INTO HIS SHELL HOLE.]

CHAPTER SEVEN

A SHOT

Then, clear and crisp against the sound of the great guns far off, there
was the sharp crack of a rifle and Tom was surprised to find himself
still standing by his machine uninjured, while the Boche collapsed back
into his shell hole like a jack-in-the-box.

He did not pause to think now. Leaving his machine, he rushed pell-mell
back to the barbed wire entanglement where the line was caught,
disengaged it and ran forward again to his wheel. Shells were bursting
all about him, but as he mounted he could see two figures emerge, one
after the other, from the American trench where it crossed the road, and
take up the burden of wire. He could feel the relief as he mounted and
rode forward and it lightened his heart as well as his load. What had
happened to delay the carriers he did not know. Perhaps those who
followed him now were new ones and his former companions lay dead or
wounded within their own lines. What he thought of most of all was his
extraordinary escape from the Boche sharpshooter and he wondered who and
where his deliverer could be.

He avoided looking into the shell hole as he passed it and soon he
reached the enemy entanglements which the tanks had flattened. Even the
flat meshes had been cleared from the road and here several regulars
waited to help him. They were covered with dirt and loo