Tom Slade with the Boys Over There Part 18

"What you _got_ to do, you do," said Archer; "that's what you'rre always sayin'. Didn't you say you wanted it so's you could see that fellerr Blondel's house from the mountains? Therre it is," he said, nodding toward an old ring-net that stood near, "and it's some souveneerr too, 'cause it's been at the bottom of the old Rhine."

Tom looked at the spy-gla.s.s which Archer had thrown into the net and the net seemed all hazy and tangled for his eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g. He would not spare himself now.

"I see I'm the fool," he stammered; "I thought I shouldn't have started across because maybe you couldn't swim so good and didn't want to admit it."

"Me? I dived in Black Lake before you werre borrn," said Archer. This was not quite true, since he was two years younger than Tom, but Tom only smiled at him through glistening eyes.

"I see now I was crazy to think about finding her--anyway----"

"You haven't forrgot how she treated us, have you?" Archer retorted, quoting Tom's own words. "It came to me all of a sudden, when I dropped the glove, and that's when I called to you. And all of a sudden I thought how you walked back toward the house with herr that night and--and--do you think I don't understand--you darrned big chump?"

CHAPTER XXII

BREAKFAST WITHOUT FOOD CARDS

"Do you know what I think?" said Archer. "If Alsace used to belong to France, then the Rhine must have been the boundary between France and Gerrmany and we'rre right on that old frontierr now--hey? I'm a smarrt lad, huh? They used to have watch towers and things 'cause I got kept in school once forr sayin' a poem wrong about a fellerr that was in a watch towerr on the Rhine. I bet this towerr had something to do with that old frontierr and I bet it was connected with that castle overr on shorre, too. Therre was a picture of a fellerr in a kind of an arrmorr looking off the top of a towerr just like this--I remember 'cause I marrked him up with a pencil so's he'd have a swallerr-tailed coat and a sunbonnet."

Archer's education was certainly helping him greatly.

"If we could once get overr therre into that Black Forest," he continued, scanning the Baden sh.o.r.e and the heights beyond with the rescued gla.s.s, "we'd be on easy street 'cause I remember gettin' licked forr sayin', 'the abrupt west slopes of this romantic region are something or otherr with wild vineyards that grow in furious thing-um-bobs----'"

"_What?_" said Tom.

"_Anyway_, there's lots of grapes there," Archer concluded.

"If that's the way you said it I don't blame 'em for lickin' you," said sober Tom. "I think by tonight I'll be able to swim it. There seems to be some houses over there--that's one thing I don't like."

The Baden side, as well as they could make out through the haze, was pretty thickly populated for a mile or two, but the lonesome mountains arose beyond and once there, they would be safe, they felt sure.

They spent the day in the dilapidated frontier tower, as Archer called it, and he was probably not far from right in his guess about it.

Certainly it had not been used for many years except apparently by fishermen occasionally, and the rotten condition of the seines showed that even such visitors had long since ceased to use it. Perhaps indeed it was a sort of outpost watch tower belonging to the gray castle which they saw through the mist.

"Maybe it belonged to a Gerrman baron," suggested Tom.

"Anyway, it's a _barren_ island," said Archer; "are you hungry?"

Tom sat in the doorway, favoring his hurt knee, and watched Archer move cautiously about among the sharp, slippery rocks, where he succeeded in cornering and spearing several bewildered fish which the troubled waters of the night had marooned in these small recesses.

"I'm afraid, you'll be seen from the sh.o.r.e," Tom said, but without that note of a.s.surance and authority which he had been accustomed to use.

"Don't worry," said Archer, "it's too thick and hazy. Just wait till I spearr one morre. Therre's a beaut, now----"

They wasted half a dozen damp matches before they could get flame enough to ignite the whisk stick which Tom held ready, but when they succeeded they "commandeered" the broken door as a "warr measurre," to quote Archer, and kindled a fire just inside the doorway where they believed that the smoke, mingling with the mist, would not be seen through the gray, murky atmosphere.

It is a great mistake to be prejudiced against a fish just because it is German. Tom and Archer were quite free from that narrow bias. And if it should ever be your lot to be marooned in a ramshackle old watch tower on the Rhine on a dull, rainy day, remember that the same storm which has marooned you will have marooned some fishes among the crevices of rock--only you must be careful to turn them often and not let them burn.

The broken rail of an old spiral stairway, if there happens to be one handy, can be twisted into a rough gridiron, and if you happen to think of it (as Tom did) you can use the battery case of your flashlight for a drinking-cup.

"If we couldn't have managed to get a light with these damp matches," he said, as they partook of their sumptuous breakfast, "we'd have just had to wait till the sun came out and we could a' got one with the lens in the spy-gla.s.s."

Once a scout, always a scout!

CHAPTER XXIII

THE CATSKILL VOLCANO IN ERUPTION

All day long the dull, drizzling rain continued, and as the hours pa.s.sed their hope revived and their courage strengthened.

"Therre's one thing I'm glad of," said Archer, "and that's that I thought about putting that Gerrman soldierr's paperrs in the glove. I've got a hunch I'd like to know what that letterr says."

"I'm glad you did," said Tom. "I got to admit _I_ didn't think of it."

By evening Tom's knee was much better though still sore, and his head pained not at all. They had but one thought now--to swim to sh.o.r.e and get into the mountains where they believed they could continue their course southward. Swimming to the nearest point on the east, or Baden bank, would, they could see by the gla.s.s, bring them into a fairly thickly populated district and how to get past this and into the protecting highlands troubled them. They had thus far avoided civilization and towns, where they knew the ever-watchful eye of Prussian authority was to be feared. They knew well enough that their wet garments const.i.tuted no disguise; but they could, at least, get to sh.o.r.e and see how the land lay.

They were greatly elated at their success so far, and at their providential reunion. Whatever difficulties they had encountered they had surmounted, and whatever difficulties lay ahead they would meet and overcome, they felt sure.

As the day wore away, the rain ceased, but the sky remained dull and murky. Their plan was to wait for the darkness and they were talking over their good luck and what they thought the rosy outlook when Tom, looking toward the Alsatian sh.o.r.e with the gla.s.s, saw a small boat which was scarcely distinguishable in the hazy twilight.

"I don't believe it's coming this way," he said confidently, handing the gla.s.s to Archer. But at the same time he was conscious of a sinking sensation.

"Yes, it is," said Archer; "it's coming right for us."

"Maybe they're just rowing across," said Tom.

Archer watched the boat intently. "It's coming herre all right," he said; "we'rre pinched. Let's get inside, anyway."

Tom smiled with a kind of sickly resignation. "Let's see," he said; "yes, you're right, they've got uniforms, too. It's all up. We might have had sense enough to know. I bet they traced us all the way through Alsace. There's no use trying to beat that crowd," he added in cynical despair.

Hope dashed when it is just reviving brings the most hopeless of all despair, and with Tom, whose nerves had been so shaken, their imminent capture seemed now like a kind of mockery.

"When I found you were all right," he said to Archer in his dull way, "and we were all alone here, I might have known it was too good to be true. I wouldn't bother now. I just got bad luck.--When I tried for the pathfinders' badge and tracked somebody that stole something," he added with his stolid disregard for detail, "I found it was my own father, and I didn't claim the badge. That's the kind of luck _I_ got. So I wouldn't try any more. 'Cause if you got bad luck you can't help it. I dropped my knife and the blade stuck in the ground--up at Temple Camp--and that's bad luck. Let 'em come----"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "IT'S FIFTY-FIFTY,--TWO AGAINST TWO," SAID ARCHER. Page 153]

This side of Tom Slade was new to Archer, and he stared curiously at the lowering face of his companion.

"That's what you call losing your morale," he said; "if you lose that--go-od _night_! Suppose General Joffre said that when the Huns werre hitting it forr Paris! S'pose _I_ said that when my foot stuck in the mud on the bottom of this plaguey riverr!"

"I didn't know that," said Tom.

"Well, you know it now," retorted Archer, "and I don't give up till they land me back in prison, and I don't give up then, eitherr. And I ain't lettin' any jack-knives get _my_ goat--so you can chalk that up in yerr little old noddle!"