ESCAPE
“Well, of all the most wonderful things that ever happened this is out
of the ordinary!”
One of the characteristics that made Phil a good soldier was the fact
that it was almost impossible to astound him. A fellow Marine commented
on this fact once, and he replied:
“Sure. If a Hun plane should drop a bomb on the end of my nose in the
middle of the night, I shouldn’t be the least bit surprised.”
His first impulse when Tim Turner presented himself to him and Dan
Fentress in the middle of the night at the entrance of the French
sandpit was to say something ridiculous. So he popped an anticlimax,
which amounted to serving notice on himself and his two friends that
this was no place for astonishment. The situation was therefore cleared
up for the benefit of all three with two sentences:
“I came to just as you and your captors were leaving and followed to
help you, but was captured, put to work on the soup truck, and escaped
tonight,” said Tim.
“We tunneled out of our prison, came here to see if the coast was clear,
and are going back now to get a bunch of prisoners who are waiting for
our report,” said Phil.
“Go on, and I’ll wait till you get back this way,” Tim proposed.
“All right,” Phil assented. “We must hustle along to see if those two
boches stumble into our tunnel. It caved in before we finished it.”
That ended the conversation, and the two prisoner-scouts hastened up the
hill after the two enemy soldiers, whose mysterious conference, held
under appearances of the most careful secrecy, caused Phil and Dan to
wonder more and more as they puzzled over the few words they had been
able to understand. Halfway up the incline they caught sight of the
worthy pair, walking leisurely and almost arm-in-arm, totally
unsuspicious, it appeared, of the proximity of any unfriendly humans at
large.
Near the top of the hill they turned to the right and soon were moving
along a highway that led into the heart of the town. The two scouts were
greatly relieved by this, as it virtually precluded any possibility of
their discovering the escape tunnel leading from the cellar of the
prison and overlooking the sandpit. The shorter route for them would
have been across the unfenced yard into which the tunnel had been cut.
A minute later Phil and Dan were back again in the basement and
reporting the success of their scouting expedition. The prisoner of the
prisoners had been bound and gagged and lay like a mummy in one corner,
scowling weirdly in the dim candle light. After inspecting his bonds and
gag to make certain that he was not likely to work loose or raise an
alarm with his voice, Phil announced that all was ready for a departure.
This announcement was communicated to the prisoners upstairs and
presently all were assembled in the cellar and ready to file out through
the tunnel.
Phil desired very much to talk over plans with the other escaping
prisoners, but the presence of the captured boche advised him that it
was not well to run the risk of his being able to understand English. So
they filed out with only a “follow the leader” understanding.
Phil and Dan led the way down the hill to the point where Corporal Tim
waited for their reappearance. Then they selected a sequestered nook,
partly shielded with a growth of high bushes near the mouth of the
sandpit and there held a conference.
“It seems to me that this is a case of every man for himself,” Evans
remarked after several of the boys, with less constitutional initiative,
had put, or seconded, the question, “What shall we do next?”
“Yes,” Phil agreed; “I don’t believe there’s any argument to be made
against that. If we keep together, we’re bound to attract attention. If
we travel singly, or in twos, we can hide better in the daytime. We’ll
be hampered, too, with these uniforms. If we separate, traveling by
night and hiding in the daytime, perhaps some of us may be able to
exchange them in some of these French villages for something less
convicting. We may find some old work clothes that the boches overlooked
or rejected with contempt, or we may find some French inhabitants caught
in the big drive of the enemy, who will bend an effort to help us
camouflage our American looks.”
“Before we separate, I want to make an announcement.”
Everybody turned questioningly toward the speaker.
“Who are you?” asked one of the escaped prisoners who stood near the boy
that volunteered this interposition and looked curiously into his face.
Evidently the inquisitor had spotted him as a stranger.
“He’s all right,” said Phil, coming to the support of his friend. “Boys,
this is Tim Turner who was with us at Belleau Woods. After I was
captured, he followed in the dusk, hoping to be able to come to my
relief. But he also was taken prisoner and escaped today. Dan Fentress
and I found him down here, or, rather, he found us, and he’s been
waiting for our return with you boys. What is it, Tim? What announcement
do you want to make?”
“This,” the bullet-headed corporal answered. “I don’t believe you and
Dan caught the significance of what those two Huns were talking about
down here, did you?”
“No, we’ll have to confess that we didn’t,” Phil replied. “We flunked
bad in our German test.”
“Well, I got it,” Tim continued impressively. “I never studied German at
school, but I worked for a German farmer two years and got so I could
carry on a conversation with him and his family without any trouble.
Those two Huns were planning one of the most fiendish plots you ever
heard of—dastardly, just about as bad as sinking the Lusitania or
torturing Belgian women and children. They were planning to kill most,
or all, of the prisoners in this place and make it appear that an
American did the deed.”