Slade made his report of this business while lying in the Epemay Hospital. This I have not seen, but Captain Whitloss has told me of it. By reason of the character of Slade’s mission, neither he nor anyone else talked of it and even the surgeons and nurses knew nothing of his late exploit, more than that he had sustained a serious injury while flying. “As soon as I saw that piece of wood,” he told the captain, “I knew it was swamp larch. That always grows near water and usually high up. I thought it must have been right close to the gun, in front of it, because it caught some of the fire. I could even smell the powder. I thought maybe it was a part of the camouflaging in front. Anyway it was torn off a limb, anyone could see that, and was near enough to get burned. In scouting they always tell things by signs. She picked it up when it fell off the thatch roof and they had to chuck a couple of buckets of water up there because the thatch was starting. She couldn’t pick it up at first, it was so hot.
“I knew there wasn’t any larch at all where I’d been ’cause if there had been I’d have seen it—wouldn’t I?”
The captain said he supposed so.
“There was only one thing to do and that was to start with the brook and follow it up. I had to start back that night under signed orders so there wasn’t much time. I knew if there were any swamp larches I’d find them that way—see? And then I’d find out how a chunk like that could get torn off and all charred, and be blown two or three miles maybe. I knew what to do then ’cause I had something to go by. That’s a scout sign, kind of.”
He certainly made good use of his scout sign. In less than two minutes, they tell me, he had picked up his trail at the little trickle of a spring whence they got their drinking water. It came down between rocks, a mere dribble of water, as if from a leaky faucet. I saw this, what there was to it, and how he managed to trace it through all its intricate windings, I am sure I do not know.
I tried to follow it up myself and got just fifteen feet by a tape measure when it ran under a flat rock.
This trickle led him, as he thought it would, to the brook from which it branched off. He had crossed this during the day, but, of course, had not followed it, for there had been no reason to do so. It led him for about three miles through a densely wooded section where he kept a continual watch for larches and cedars. But there were none to be seen and no point of elevation commanding a prospect to the south.
He at last reached a place where the brook ran far below him between rocks and he followed its course through this ravine with great difficulty until he came to a point where it appeared to emerge out of a sort of cave or tunnel and he climbed down to examine it.
He found that the ravine which he had been following branched out of this larger ravine and that this latter had been roofed with boards and logs and brush, forming a sort of covered tunnel, which was completely concealed save at this point of juncture where the brook emerged into the narrower way. He was now hot upon the trail though he probably gave no sign of excitement.
He judged by the stars, he said, that this covered ravine ran north and south and if it did and ran fairly straight, its northern end would be somewhere in the neighborhood of the railroad village of Le Chesne, or at least near the line of trail thereabout, while its southern end would be at the steep slope of the hills southward.
He entered the passage and found that the brook trickled along here not much wider than in the narrower ravine, and that the bed of the passage was hard and fairly flat. He reached above him and pressed against the artificial covering. Cross-pieces had been wedged between the converging rock at intervals, two or three feet below the upper surface and between these he could feel the considerable thickness of brush w............