CHAPTER XXVII THE HAND GRENADE

“Did you hear that?” asked Ned of Jerry, for the sound of the alarm in the night had penetrated to their barracks, and several had awakened.

“I’ve got him! I’ve got him! He mustn’t get away!” was shouted again, and then a glimmer of the truth began to dawn on Jerry.

“Corporal of the guard, post number seven!” was shouted from somewhere out on the fields about the camp.

By this time all in the immediate vicinity of the barracks, where Ned, Bob and Jerry had their bunks, were aroused. Lights were set aglow, and Ned, looking over to a bed which had been temporarily placed for Professor Snodgrass, cried:

“He’s gone!”

“Yes. And I guess he’s the one who’s got him!” added Jerry with a laugh. “I think it was his voice that caused the disturbance. Perhaps we’d better go out and see what it all is. If it’s some one who doesn’t know the professor they might take him for a spy, and use him roughly.”

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“Who do you suppose he’s caught?” asked Bob. “Do you think it can be Crooked Nose or one of his cronies?”

“I don’t imagine it’s anything as dramatic as that,” returned Jerry. “I rather think the professor has been bug-hunting again, and he has found his quarry most unexpectedly, which has caused his jubilation.”

And this they found to be true. When they had slipped on a few garments and their shoes and had gone outside, they found Professor Snodgrass walking along between two sentries. On the faces of the soldiers were puzzled looks, but on that of the little scientist was a gentle and satisfied smile, as though the world had used him very well indeed.

“I have it, boys!” he exclaimed, as he caught sight of his three friends. “It is one of the rarest of its kind. I caught it——”

“He caught it on my post, whatever it is,” said one of the sentries. “And he nearly scared my supper out of me. Talk about snakes! I’d rather see ’em any night!”

“What did you find?” asked Jerry of the professor.

“A new kind of centipede,” was the answer, and the professor showed, in a glass-topped box, a horrible, many-legged insect that was squirming around, trying to get out.

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“Oh, landy!” cried the sentry who had apprehended the little scientist, peering into the box. “And to think one of them was loose on my post! Say, how long do you live after one bites you?” he asked anxiously. “There might be more where I have to walk, and if one nips me——”

“Don’t worry,” said Professor Snodgrass. “The bite of this centipede, while it is painful, is not deadly. Proper treatment will make you safe. But this is a most wonderful specimen. I had hoped to find one, but not so soon.”

“And didn’t you discover anything else?” asked an officer who had come out to see what the excitement was about.

“Anything else? No, but I’ll keep on looking, if you’ll let me. I may find a scorpion, though I am a bit doubtful about finding them so far north. However, I’m sure that just before I caught the centipede I saw a number of giant spiders with double stings. I’d like to look for them, and——”

“Excuse me, Lieutenant!” exclaimed the sentry who had caught the professor. “But would you mind giving me another post? He found all them animals he speaks of right here where I’m patrollin’.” And the soldier looked more frightened than if he had been told to charge on a battery of machine guns.

“I mean you saw no unauthorized persons trying[216] to get through the lines, did you?” asked the lieutenant of the professor. “The insects were all you found?”

“Yes, but I haven’t found enough,” answered the scientist. “I should like more time. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up to hunt for specimens, and I was most successful.”

“I’m afraid we shall have to ask you to postpone your operations until morning,” said the officer with a smile. “We want you to feel free to advance the cause of science as much as you can, but a war camp at night is a nervous sort of place, and the least alarm disturbs a large number of men.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Snodgrass. “I can, of course, wait until it is light. There may be more scorpions and centipedes out then.”

“I’m glad I go off duty,” murmured the sentry.

Official explanations were then made. As he had said, Professor Snodgrass had been unable to sleep, and had arisen, without awakening the boys or any of their comrades, and had gone outside the barracks with his electric flash light and his collection boxes.

He had seen the centipede wiggling along in the sand, and had caught it, his yells of delight, announcing the fact, giving the alarm, and causing the sentries to think a corporal’s guard of German spies had descended on them. Two of them[217] made a rush for the professor, much to his surprise. For when he was getting specimens he was oblivious to his surroundings, thinking only of what he was after.

The camp finally settled back to quietness again, and the professor went with the boys back to the barracks, but it was some time before any of them got to sleep again.

The next day Professor Snodgrass found a number of what he said were very rare and valuable bugs from a collector’s standpoint, but which, to the boys and their chums, seemed to be utterly worthless and great pests, for most of them bit or stung.

“Ah, but you don’t understand!” the scientist would say, when objections were made to his viewpoint.

“Well, as long as you catch bugs by daylight, and don’t wake us up in the middle of the night, we’ll forgive you,” said Ned.

“Especially after disappointing us so,” added Jerry.

“Disappoint?” queried the professor. “Why, I couldn’t have asked for a better specimen of centipede than the one I captured.”

They had a day’s furlough coming to them, and they decided to use it, when it was granted, in making a search for the crooked-nosed man. At the same time they could enjoy an outing with the[218] professor, and watch him catch “bugs,” as the boys called all his specimens, whether they were horned toads or minute insects that needed a microscope to distinguish them from the leaves on which they fed.

“This will be like old times,” declared Bob, as they started out one day after the morning mess, the professor being a guest of Jerry’s company.

But though the expedition was a success from a scientific standpoint, in that Professor Snodgrass secured many new specimens, it was a failure as far as the crooked-nosed man was concerned. There was no trace of him at the old barn. In fact the boys scarcely expected to find any there. But they did hope to get some news of him from Mr. Martin, the farmer who had so unjustly accused the chums of taking eggs.

“But he isn’t here,” said that person, when the boys had tramped out to his place and made inquiries. Mr. Martin seemed somewhat ashamed of the r?le he had played, and tried to make amends.

“I guess you boys scared him away,” he said, referring to the crooked-nosed man. “I don’t know anything about him except that he said his name was Jim Waydell, and he came along here, asking for work. I sized him up as a sort of tramp, but he was handy around the place, and, as I needed a man, I took him on, though I didn’t[219] like his looks. But I figured he couldn’t help that. Anyhow he’s skipped, and I don’t know where he is.”

That seemed to end the matter, though the boys had hopes of coming across the crooked-nosed man again.

“Not only would we like to get him on account of the part he may have had in robbing the Frenchman,” announced Jerry, “but I think he and some others, including Pug Kennedy, are mixed up in a plan to do some damage to the camp. We don’t know enough to say anything without getting laughed at, perhaps, but we may be able to find out.”

“That’s right!” exclaimed the professor. “Keep your eyes open. If I hadn’t done that I’d never have caught the centipede.”

They returned to camp, and the next day Professor Snodgrass had to leave. He was on his way farther south, to visit a scientific friend, the two expecting to go on a collecting trip together.

“I may stop and see you on my way north again,” said the scientist. “If I hear anything of the crooked-nosed man I’ll let you know.”

Once again the boys took up the routine of camp life. They were being made into good soldier material, along with thousands of their chums and comrades, and they were beginning to love the life, hard as it was at times.

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They drilled, and drilled, and drilled again; they perfected themselves in the use of the rifle and the bayonet; and they received machine gun instructions.

“What is it to be to-day?” asked Bob, as they went out from the mess hall. “Do we hike or shoot?”

“Hand grenade practice,” answered Jerry.

“Good!” exclaimed Ned.

There was a fascination in hurling the lemon-shaped projectiles from trenches, and watching them blow up the earth and stones beyond, where some Germans were supposed to be hiding.

Hand grenades are of several kinds. That used at Camp Dixton was a variation of the Mills bomb, consisting of a hollow metal container, shaped like a lemon, but somewhat larger. It is made of cast iron and is crisscrossed and scored with a number of depressed cuts, which divide the surface of the grenade into lozenge-like sections. The grenade is filled with a powerful explosive, set off by a time fuse, and when the bomb detonates it bursts into pieces, along the scored lines, and the hundreds of lozenge-like pieces of iron become so many bullets, flying in all directions.

The hand grenade is thrown with a motion such as a cricketer uses in “bowling” the ball. It is an overhand style of throwing, and this has been found best for accuracy and does not tire the arm[221] as much as a straight throw. The arm is held stiff as the bomb is hurled.

The time fuse can be set to explode the bomb as it reaches the other trench, or it may be made to explode in mid-air, and, also, the detonation can be made to take place after the bomb has landed.

As long as the bomb is held in the hand it is harmless, for the fingers press down on an outside lever that controls the firing mechanism. But as soon as this hold is released, after the bomb has been made ready for firing, it is likely to explode. Consequently after a bomb has been hurled away from one, it is a good thing to keep one’s distance from it.

“Lively work now, boys!” called the captain, as Ned, Bob and Jerry, with their chums, entered the trench for the hand grenade work. “Just imagine there are a lot of Germans in that other trench who need extermination.”

The practice began, and for a time one would have thought a real battle was in progress, so rapid were the explosions of the grenades. A short distance down the trench, in which the Cresville friends were, stood Pug Kennedy. They had seen little of him during the last few days, as, owing to an infraction of the rules, he had spent some time in the guardhouse. But now he was out.

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“This way of throwing these lemons makes me tired!” exclaimed Pug. “Why can’t I throw one like a baseball? I can make a better hit that way, and I’m going to.”

Before any of his comrades could tell him not to disobey orders this way, Pug suddenly threw a bomb. In making the underhand toss, his elbow struck the edge of the trench, the grenade left his hand and fell a few feet away, directly in front of a line of soldiers crouched in the depression.

“Now look what you did!” yelled the corporal in charge of Pug’s squad. “That’ll go off in a second or two!”

“Heads down, every one!” cried a lieutenant who had seen what had happened.

The bomb, with the fuse set to explode it in a short time, lay on the ground just outside the trench that was filled with young soldiers. Pug’s recklessness had endangered all their lives.