“They are?” cried Charlie.

“That is true!  You shall see!”

“Hurrah!” cried the moving picture boys, and their fears and weariness seemed to depart from them in a moment.

“The great airship raid was a success,” went on the Frenchman.  “Our troops and yours have made a big advance, and have captured many prisoners.  They would have had Labenstein, but he is beyond prisons now.  Let us go hence!  Even dead I can not endure his company.  I suffered much on his account.”

“Well, things are happening so fast I don’t know which to begin to think of first,” remarked Joe.  “But, on general principles, I presume it’s a good thing to get out of this tunnel.  Come on, boys.”

“One moment,” interposed the lieutenant.  “Perhaps you will like to take these with you.”

He stooped and lifted a pile of trench bags, and the boys saw the boxes of moving picture films.

“Ours?” cried Joe.

“None else,” answered the Frenchman.  “I trust you will find them all right.”

“Not a seal broken!” reported Charlie, who had quickly examined the cases.  “This is great!”

Together, hardly able to believe their good luck, they made their way out of the log-protected room—­once a German bomb-proof dugout.  As they emerged into the trenches, carrying the films, the boys saw American soldiers.

“The Stars and Stripes!” cried Charlie, as he noted the United States flag.  “Now we’re all right!”

“Whew!  We did make some advance!” added Blake, as they saw how the battle lines of the French and Americans had been extended since they had crawled into No Man’s Land the night before.

The boys learned later that the airship raid was the forerunner of a big offensive that had been carried out when they were held prisoners and in the tunnel.  The Germans had been driven back with heavy loss, and one of their ammunition dumps, or storage places, had been blown up, which had caused the collapse of the tunnel.

That the moving picture boys were welcomed by the soldiers, among whom they had many friends, goes without saying.  And the recovery of the films was a matter for congratulation, for they were considered very valuable to the army.

“Though it was Lieutenant Secor who really saved them for us,” explained Blake, when the story of their adventure was being told.

“And I am glad the time has come when Lieutenant Secor can appear in his true light,” said Captain Black.  “Even I suspected him, and he lost many friends who will come back to him, now that he risked all to serve his country in a role seldom honored—­that of getting secret intelligence from the enemy.”

For that is what the French lieutenant had been doing.  Even while he was in the United States, where the boys first met him, he had been playing that part.

“But I assure you,” he said to Blake and the others, “that the destruction of your films by my auto was an accident.  When I found you believed it done purposely I let it go that way, as it helped me play my part the better.  Also, I had to act in a manner to make you believe I was a friend of Labenstein.  But that was all a part.”