ls for help by
new methods in wireless.

CHAPTER XIII

THE CAVE OF DEATH

It is one of the fortunes, or misfortunes, of war that a position gained
one day, even at great human sacrifice, may be of no real or practical
value whatever the next. So it was with the advance post of
communication located by Lieutenant Mackinson and his party under such
dangerous conditions during the night before.

The information which they had gained through tapping the enemy's wire
enabled the American and French troops, operating together, to prevent
the German trick from being carried into effect. More than that, it
enabled them to turn the knowledge of those plans to such good advantage
that the allied brigades swept forward in terrible force against the
weakest points in the enemy line. They pushed the whole Boche front back
for more than a mile--at the very point where it had been considered
strongest!

As a consequence, the point of communication which the lieutenant and
his aides had established with so much difficulty was now well within
the territory held by the American and French fighters. The requirements
for a further advance now made it necessary to have another outpost
point of communication as near to the enemy trenches as the first one
was before the day's battle put the Allies a mile further forward.

And so, except for Tom Rawle, who was resting easy from his hip wound,
the same party started out at the same tune for the same purpose on this
second night, but with a very much sharpened realization of the
obstacles they had to overcome and the chances they faced of being
wounded or captured.

"We take an entirely different direction," Lieutenant Mackinson told
them, as he looked up from the map he had been studying. "We go to the
north and east and as close to the observation trenches as possible."

Now the danger of this can readily be seen from considering what an
observation trench is. The front-line trenches of the opposing armies,
of course, run in two practically parallel lines. But an observation
trench runs almost at right angles with the front-line trenches, and
directly toward the enemy trench, so far as it is possible to extend
it. The extreme ends of these observation trenches are known as
"listening posts," and often they are so close to the enemy lines that
the men in the opposing army can be heard talking.

Lieutenant Mackinson and his aides, Joe, Jerry, Slim and Frank Hoskins,
were to g