Iggy was feeling a little better, having had the weight off his injured foot for a while, and soon they were progressing along the tunnel toward the exit. This tunnel was wider, and on the way along it the four Khaki Boys, as well as the members of the relief party, looked for side openings or shafts.
"Here's one!" exclaimed the lieutenant. "Corporal White, you take a man and go along it and see if you can find any trace of the four mentioned by Sergeant Blaise. Be on the alert. Even two of the men being in American uniforms would not guarantee anything. But this is probably how they eluded us," he said to Jimmy, nodding to indicate the passage.
A little later the party emerged from the tunnel that led into the dugout, and they were welcomed by their comrades, many of whom had thought that Jimmy and his chums had been killed, or at least badly wounded when the big German shell smashed in the top of the shelter.
Iggy was taken to a dressing station, and later it was learned that he was not as badly hurt as was at first feared. He would be back in line again within a few days, it was said.
The exploration of the side passage leading off from the tunnel amounted to little. Corporal White said he saw no trace of the four men, but he reported that there was a maze of passages leading from the one he examined, and it was possible for the four to have hidden in these, or to have made their escape along one of the dark, winding tubes of earth.
"Well, this makes the mystery all the more puzzling," said Jimmy, when he and his chums talked it over. "I certainly would like to know who those fellows were--especially the ones in uniform."
And there was a deeper mystery about it than he even dreamed of.
But little the worse from their nerve-racking experience in the collapsed dugout, Jimmy and his chums finished their period of leave and once more took their places with their comrades, ready to fight or do anything else required of them. Iggy was given a detail as orderly to a major, which made his duties light. But he was anxious to get on the firing line again.
It was early one morning--quite a zero hour, in fact, though none was set--when suddenly there began a furious firing from the German lines, removed only a short distance at this particular part of the front where the Khaki Boys were stationed.