Much has been said of the work of spies--said and written. Here is a

woman in Paris sending forbidden messages on a marked coin. Men are

tapped on the shoulder by a civil gentleman in a sack suit, and walk

away with him, never to be seen again.

But of one sort of spy nothing has been written and but little is known.

Yet by him are battles won or lost. On the intelligence he brings

attacks are prepared for and counter-attacks launched. It is not always

the airman, in these days of camouflage, who brings word of ammunition

trains or of new batteries.

In the early days of the war the work of the secret service at the Front

was of the gravest importance. There were fewer air machines, and

observation from the air was a new science. Also trench systems were

incomplete. Between them, known to a few, were breaks of solid land,

guarded from behind. To one who knew, it was possible, though dangerous

beyond words, to cross the inundated country that lay between the Belgian

Front and the German lines, and even with good luck to go farther.

Henri, for instance, on that night before had left the advanced trench

at the railway line, had crawled through the Belgian barbed wire, and

had advanced, standing motionless as each star shell burst overhead, and

then moving on quickly. The inundation was his greatest difficulty.

Shallow in most places, it was full of hidden wire and crisscrossed with

irrigation ditches. Once he stumbled into one, but he got out by

swimming. Had he been laden with a rifle and equipment it might have

been difficult.

He swore to himself as his feet touched ground again. For a star shell

was hanging overhead, and his efforts had sent wide and ever increasingly

widening circles over the placid surface of the lagoon. Let them lap to

the German outposts and he was lost.

Henri's method was peculiar to himself. Where there was dry terrain he

did as did the others, crouched and crept. But here in the salt marshes,

where the sea had been called to Belgium's aid, he had evolved a system

of moving, neck deep in water, stopping under the white night lights,

advancing in the darkness. There was no shelter. The country was flat

as a hearth.

He would crawl out at last in the darkness and lie flat, as the dead lie.

And then, inch by inch, he would work his way forward, by routes that he

knew. Sometimes he went entirely through the German lines, and

reconnoitered on the roads behind. They were shallow lines then, for

the inundation made the country almost untenable, and a charge in force

from the Belgians across was unlikely.




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