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[Illustration: "I AM--AMERICAN. MY NAME--IS TOM SLADE." Frontispiece
(Page 9)]
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TOM SLADE
WITH THE BOYS
OVER THERE
BY
PERCY K. FITZHUGH
Author of
TOM SLADE, BOY SCOUT
TOM SLADE AT TEMPLE CAMP
TOM SLADE ON THE RIVER
TOM SLADE ON A TRANSPORT
Illustrated by
R. EMMETT OWEN
Published With the Approval of
THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS: NEW YORK
Made in the United States of America
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Copyright, 1918, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP
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To
F. A. O.
The real Tom Slade, whose extraordinary adventures on land and sea put
these storied exploits in the shade, this book is dedicated with envious
admiration.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
I THE HOME IN ALSACE 1
II AN APPARITION 5
III TOM'S STORY 12
IV THE OLD WINE VAT 22
V THE VOICE FROM THE DISTANCE 32
VI PRISONERS AGAIN 38
VII WHERE THERE'S A WILL---- 42
VIII THE HOME FIRE NO LONGER BURNS 51
IX FLIGHT 58
X THE SOLDIER'S PAPERS 64
XI THE SCOUT THROUGH ALSACE 72
XII THE DANCE WITH DEATH 79
XIII THE PRIZE SAUSAGE 84
XIV A RISKY DECISION 90
XV HE WHO HAS EYES TO SEE 97
XVI THE WEAVER OF MERNON 103
XVII THE CLOUDS GATHER 112
XVIII IN THE RHINE 118
XIX TOM LOSES HIS FIRST CONFLICT WITH THE ENEMY 124
XX A NEW DANGER 131
XXI COMPANY 137
XXII BREAKFAST WITHOUT FOOD CARDS 141
XXIII THE CATSKILL VOLCANO IN ERUPTION 145
XXIV MILITARY ETIQUETTE 155
XXV TOM IN WONDERLAND 162
XXVI MAGIC 167
XXVII NONNENMATTWEIHER 174
XXVIII AN INVESTMENT 180
XXIX CAMOUFLAGE 184
XXX THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE 190
XXXI THE END OF THE TRAIL 196
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TOM SLADE WITH THE BOYS OVER THERE
CHAPTER I
THE HOME IN ALSACE
In the southwestern corner of the domains of Kaiser Bill, in a fair
district to which he has no more right than a highwayman has to his
victim's wallet, there is a quaint old house built of gray stone and
covered with a clinging vine.
In the good old days when Alsace was a part of France the old house
stood there and was the scene of joy and plenty. In these evil days when
Alsace belongs to Kaiser Bill, it stands there, its dim arbor and
pretty, flower-laden trellises in strange contrast to the lumbering army
wagons and ugly, threatening artillery which pass along the quiet road.
And if the prayers of its rightful owners are answered, it will still
stand there in the happy days to come when fair Alsace shall be a part
of France again and Kaiser Bill and all his clanking claptrap are gone
from it forever.
The village in which this pleasant homestead stands is close up under
the boundary of Rhenish Bavaria, or Germany proper (or improper), and in
the happy days when Alsace was a part of France it had been known as
Leteur, after the French family which for generations had lived in the
old gray house.
But long before Kaiser Bill knocked down Rheims Cathedral and
black-jacked Belgium and sank the Lusitania, he changed the name of this
old French village to Dundgardt, showing that even then he believed in
Frightfulness; for that is what it amounted to when he changed Leteur to
Dundgardt.
But he could not very well change the old family name, even if he could
change the names of towns and villages in his stolen province, and old
Pierre Leteur and his wife and daughter lived in the old house under the
Prussian menace, and managed the vineyard and talked French on the sly.
On a certain fair evening old Pierre and his wife and daughter sat in
the arbor and chatted in the language which they loved. The old man had
lost an arm in the fighting when his beloved Alsace was lost to France
and he had come back here still young but crippled and broken-hearted,
to live under the Germans because this was the home of his people. He
had found the old house and the vineyard devastated.
After a while he married an Alsatian girl very much younger than
himself, and their son and daughter had grown up, German subjects it is
true, but hating their German masters and loving the old French Alsace
of which their father so often told them.
While Florette was still a mere child she committed the heinous crime of
singing the _Marseillaise_. The watchful Prussian authorities learned of
this and a couple of Prussian soldiers came after her, for she must
answer to the Kaiser for this terrible act of sedition.
Her brother Armand, then a boy of sixteen, had shouted "_Vive la
France!_" in the very faces of the grim soldiers and had struck one of
them with all his young strength.
In that blow spoke gallant, indomitable France!
For this act Armand might have been shot, but, being young and agile and
the German soldiers being fat and clumsy, he effected a flank move and
disappeared before they could lay hands on him and it was many a long
day before ever his parents heard from him again.
At last there came a letter from far-off America, telling of his flight
across the mountains into France and of his working his passage to the
United States. How this letter got through the Prussian censorship
against all French Alsatians, it would be hard to say. But it was the
first and last word from him that had ever reached the blighted home.
After a while the storm cloud of the great war burst and then the
prospect of hearing from Armand became more hopeless as the British navy
threw its mighty arm across the ocean highway. And old Pierre, because
he was a French veteran, was watched more suspiciously than ever.
Florette was nearly twenty now, and Armand must be twenty-three or four,
and they were talking of him on this quiet, balmy night, as they sat
together in the arbor. They spoke in low tones, for to talk in French
was dangerous, they were already under the cloud of suspicion, and the
very trees in the neighborhood of a Frenchman's home seemed to have
ears....