Tom Slade with the Boys Over There Part 22

They felt that this would be easier than the long tramp around and that they would have the advantage while swimming of an extended view and would avoid any danger which might lurk behind the trees.

They had almost reached the opposite sh.o.r.e when Archer sputtered and called out to Tom: "Look, look!"

Tom looked and saw, hanging from a branch on the sh.o.r.e they were nearing, the two missing field gray uniform coats.

This was too much. Speechless with amazement they clambered ash.o.r.e and walked half fearfully up to their fugitive garments. There was no doubt about it, there were the two coats dangling from a low hanging branch, perfectly dry and in the pockets the spy-gla.s.s and the trusty compa.s.s.

The two boys stared blankly at each other.

"Well--what--do--you--know--about--that?" said Archer.

"They didn't steal anything, anyway," said Tom, half under his breath.

Archer stared at the coats, then peered cautiously about among the trees. Then he faced Tom again, who returned his stare in mute astonishment.

"You don't s'pose we could have swum across in ourr sleep, do you?" said Archer.

Tom shook his head thoughtfully. Could it be that those Huns, those fiends of the air and the ocean depths, those demons who could shoot a gun for seventy miles and rear their yellow heads suddenly up out of the green waters close to the American sh.o.r.e--could it be that they were indeed genii--ghouls of evil, who played fast and loose with poor wanderers in the forest until the moment came for crushing them utterly?

Or could it be that this black wilderness, perched upon its mountain chain, was indeed the magic toyland of all creation, the home of Santa Claus and----

"Come on," said Archer, "let's not stand herre. B'lieve _me_, I want to get as far away from this place as we can!"

CHAPTER XXVII

NONNENMATTWEIHER

But the worst was yet to come. They hurried now, for whatever the cause of this extraordinary incident, they wished to get away from it, and having crossed the lake they paused not to dry their garments but continued southward following the almost obliterated wagon tracks which ran from the sh.o.r.e.

"I wonder how the wagons got across?" said Tom.

"Wings," said Archer solemnly, shaking his head.

In a little while they came to the toymaker's cottage, with the mechanical cuckoo and the windmills and the basket of soldiers and animals and the old Swiss toymaker himself, sitting like a big toy, in the doorway.

"Well--I'll--be----" began Archer.

Tom simply gaped, too perplexed to speak. He had believed that he was something of a woodsman, and he certainly believed that he would not go north supposing that he was going south! Could there be another Swiss toymaker, and another cottage and another squawking cuckoo, exactly like the others? Were they all alike, the lonesome denizens of this spooky place, like the wooden inhabitants of a Noah's ark?

"This Hun forest has got Aladdin's cave beat twenty ways," said Archer.

"Either we'rre crazy or this place is."

Suddenly the bright thought occurred to Tom to look at his compa.s.s.

Unless the magnetic pole had changed its position, and the whole earth gone askew, they were tramping northward, as he saw to his unutterable amazement.

"Did we swim across the lake or didn't we?" he demanded of Archer, roused out of his wonted stolidness.

"Surre, we did!"

"Then I give it up," said Tom resignedly. "The compa.s.s says north--we're going north. This is the very same toymaker."

"Go-o-od _night_!" said Archer, with even more than his usual vehemence.

"Maybe the Gerrmans have conquerred the Norrth Pole and taken all the steel to make mountains, just like they knocked international law all endways, hey? That's why the compa.s.s don't point right. G-o-o-o-o-od _night_!"

This ingenious theory, involving a rather large piece of strategy even for "supermen," did not appeal to Tom's sober mind.

"That's what it is," said Archer. "You've got to admit that if they could send Zeps and submarines and things to the North Pole and cop all the steel, the British navy, and ourrs too, would be floppin' around the ocean like a chicken with its head cut off.--It's a good idea!"

Tom went up to the old toymaker, who greeted them with a smile, seeming no more surprised to see them than he had been the day before.

"North--_north_?" asked Tom, pointing.

"Nort--yah," said the old man, pointing too.

"Water," said Tom; "swim--_swim_ across" (he pointed southward and made the motions of swimming). The old man nodded as if he understood.

"Ach--vauder, yach,--Nonnenmattweiher."

"What?" said Tom.

"_What_?" said Archer.

"Nonnenmattweiher," said the old man. "Yah."

"He wants to know what's the matter with you," said Archer.

"Water," Tom repeated, almost in desperation.

"Swim (he went through the motions): Swim across water to south--start south, go north." He made no attempt to convey the incident of the vanishing coats.

"Water--yah,--Nonnenmattweiher," the man repeated.

At last, by dint of repeating words and swinging their arms and going through a variety of extraordinary motions, the boys succeeded in conveying to the little man that something was wrong in the neighborhood of the lake, and he appeared willing enough to go back with them, trotting along beside Tom in his funny belted blouse, for all the world like a mechanical toy. Tom had his misgivings as to whether they would really reach the lake no matter which way they went, but they did reach it, and standing under the tree where they had recovered their vanished coats they tried to explain to the old man what had happened--that they had crossed from the north to the south bank and continued southward, only to find that they were going north!

Suddenly a new light illumined the little man's countenance and he chuckled audibly. Then he pointed across the lake, chattering and chuckling the while, and went through a series of strange motions, spreading his legs farther and farther apart, pointing to the ground between them, and concluded this exhibition with a sweeping motion of his hands as if bidding some invisible presence of that enchanted place G.o.d-speed across the water.

"Och--goo," he said, and shook his head and laughed.

"I know what he means," said Tom at last, with undisguised chagrin, "and I'm a punk scout. I didn't notice anything at all. Come on. We've got to swim across again--that's south, all right."

"What is it?" asked Archer.

"I'll show you when we get there--come on."

The little Swiss toymaker stood watching them and laughing with a spasmodic laugh which he might have caught from his own wooden cuckoo.

When they reached the other sh.o.r.e Tom fell at once to examining a very perceptible rift in the earth a few feet from the sh.o.r.e.