"That's what we're here for!" exclaimed Blake.
"How about you, Duncan?" asked the captain of Joe. "Is your side all right?"
"Oh, yes! I'd never know I'd been hurt. I'm game, all right!"
"Well, it will be in a day or so. None of us knows exactly when, as those higher up don't let us into all of their secrets. Too many leaks, you know. We want to surprise Fritz if we can."
This gave the moving picture boys something further to think about and to plan for, and when they had taken the reels of exposed film, showing the dinner scenes, from their cameras, they made the machines ready for more strenuous work.
"I think I'll put an extra covering of thin sheet steel on the film boxes," said Charlie, talking the matter over with his two chums. "A stray bit of shrapnel might go through them now and make a whole reel light-struck."
"I suppose it would be a good idea," agreed Blake. "Go to it, Mac, and we'll be ready when you are."
Four days of anxious waiting followed, with the men keyed up to concert pitch, so to speak, and eager for the word to come that would send them out of the trenches and against the ranks of the Germans.
But for a long time no word came from the higher command to prepare for the assault, though many knew it was pending. Perhaps the Germans knew it, too, and that was what caused the delay. None could say.
Blake, Joe and Charlie were in readiness. They had their cameras adjusted, had plenty of fresh film, and but awaited the word that would send them from their comparatively comfortable house with the French family into the deadly trenches.
Finally the word came. Once more in the gray dawn the boys took their places with their cameras in the communicating trench, while ahead of them crouched the soldiers eager to be unleashed at the Germans.
And then they went through it all over again. There was the curtain of fire, the artillery opening up along a five-mile front with a din the boys had never heard equalled.
Waiting for the light to improve a little, the boys set up their cameras in a little grove of trees where they would be somewhat protected and began to make the pictures.
The battle was one of the worst of the war. There were many killed and wounded, and through it all--through the storm of firing--the moving picture boys took reel after reel of film.