TOM IN WONDERLAND
All through that night, with their compass as a guide, they climbed the
hills, keeping in a southerly direction, but verging slightly eastward.
In the morning they found themselves on the edge of a high, deeply
wooded plateau, which they knew extended with more or less uniformity to
the Swiss frontier.
Looking ahead of them, in a southerly direction, they could see dim,
solemn aisles of sombre fir trees and the ground was like a brown velvet
carpet, yielding gently under their feet. The air was laden with a
pungent odor, accentuated by the recent storm, and the damp, resiny
fragrance was like a bracing tonic to the fugitives, bidding them
welcome to these silent, unfrequented depths.
They were now, indeed, within the precincts of the renowned Schwarzwald,
whose wilderness toyland sends forth out of its sequestered hamlets (or
did) wooden lions, tigers and rhinoceroses for the whole world, and
monkeys on sticks and jumping-jacks and little wooden villages, like the
little wooden villages where they are made.
The west slopes of this romantic region were abrupt, almost like the
Palisades of the Hudson, running close to the river in some places, and
in other places descending several miles back from the shore, so that a
panoramic view of southern Alsace was always obtainable from the sharp
edge of this forest workshop of Santa Claus. In the east the plateau
slopes away and peters out in the lowlands, so that, as one might say,
the Black Forest forms a kind of huge natural springboard to afford one
a good running jump across the Rhine into Alsace.
Archer's battered and misused geography had not lied about the
commissary department of this storied wilderness, for the wild grapes
(of which the famous Rhenish wine is made) did indeed grow in "furious
what-d'you-call-'ems" or luxurious profusion if you prefer, upon the
precipitous western slopes.
All that day they tramped southward, meeting not a soul, and feeling
almost as if they were in a church. It seemed altogether grotesque that
Germany, grim, fighting, war-crazy Germany, should own such a peaceful
region as this.
In the course of the day, they helped the prohibition movement, as
Archer said, by eating grapes in such quantities as seriously to reduce
the output of Rhenish wine. "But, oh, Ebeneezerr!" he added. "What
wouldn't I give for a good russet apple and a dipper of sweet cider."
"You're always thinking about apples and souvenirs," said Tom.
"You can bet I'm going to get a souveneerr in herre, all right!" Archer
announced. "Therre ought to be lots of good ones herre, hey?"
"Maybe they grow in furious what-d'you-call-'ems?" suggested sober Tom.
"If it keeps as level as this, we ought to be able to waltz into the
barrbed wirre by tomorrow night. This is the only thing about Gerrmany
that's on the level, hey?"
Toward evening they had the lesser of the two surprises which were in
store for them in the Black Forest. They were hiking along when suddenly
Tom paused and listened intently.
"What is it?" Archer asked.
"A bird," said Tom, "but I never heard a bird make a noise like that
before."
"He's chirrping in Gerrman," suggested Archer.
The more Tom listened, the more puzzled he became, for he had the
scout's familiarity with bird voices and this was a new one to him.
"Therre's a house," Archer said.
And sure enough there, nestling among the firs some distance ahead, was
the quaintest little house the boys had ever seen. It was almost like a
toy house with a picturesque roof ten sizes too big for it, and a funny
little man in a smock sitting in the doorway. Hanging outside was a
large cuckoo clock and it was the wooden cuckoo which Tom had heard.
Shavings littered the ground about this tiny, wilderness manufactory,
and upon a rough board, like a scout messboard, were a number of little
handmade windmills revolving furiously. Wooden soldiers and
stolid-looking horses with conventional tails, all fresh from the deft
and cunning hands which wielded the harmless jack-knife, were piled
helter-skelter in a big basket waiting, waiting, waiting, for the end of
the war, to go forth in peace and goodwill to the ends of the earth and
nestle snugly in the bottom of Christmas stockings.
This quaint old man could speak scarcely any English, but when the boys
made out that he was Swiss, and apparently kindly disposed, they
sprawled on the ground and rested, succeeding by dint of motions and a
few words of German in establishing a kind of intercourse with him. He
was apparently as far removed from the war as if he had lived in the
Fiji Islands, and the fugitives felt quite as safe at his rustic abode
as if they had been on the planet Mars. His nationality, too, gave them
the cheering assurance that they were approaching the frontier.
"Vagons--noh," he said; "no mohr." Then he pointed to his brimming
basket and said more which they could not understand.
Like most persons who live in the forest, he seemed neither surprised at
their coming nor curious. They gathered that in former days wagons had
wound through these forest ways gathering the handiwork of the people,
but that they came no more. To Tom it seemed a pathetic thing that
Kaiser Bill should reach out his bloody hand and blight the peaceful
occupation of this quaint little old man of the forest. Perhaps he would
die, far away there in his tree-embowered cottage, before the wagons
ever came again, and the overflowing basket would rot away and the
windmills blow themselves to pieces....