DOWN THE SLOPE
Upon hearing this unpleasant news poor Bumpus looked broken-hearted. He
seemed to see a host of obstacles confronting him. Paris must have been
something like a thousand miles away just then, according to his
enlarged view.
“Just like the luck,” he sighed desolately; “things were moving along
too fine to last. I had a sneaking idea in my mind something was bound
to blow up before long. What under the sun _will_ we do, Thad?”
“Not give up our plan of getting to Paris, for one thing,” replied the
leader firmly, with that determined look on his face the others knew so
well.
“Hurrah!” exclaimed Giraffe; “that’s the stuff I like to hear! _Nil
desperandum_ it is, Bumpus, and we’ll carry it out on that line if it
takes all the balance of the summer. Grant said that, but any fellow
with a backbone can feel it.”
“First of all,” continued the practical Thad, “I’m meaning to skirmish
around some more and find out what can be done. You see, all the
passengers have been pulled out of the carriages. Listen to them babble,
will you? They are mostly French, and as excitable as wildfire.
Everybody wants to get away from the border here in a hurry. Their dear
old France lies just over yonder, and they’re bound to travel if it has
to be on foot.”
“Oh, my stars!” ejaculated Bumpus, and then he stopped short,
remembering that much as he disliked walking any great distance, he
should be the last one of the quartette to complain now, for it was his
errand that beckoned them on to Paris.
They immediately bestirred themselves. Each fellow was to mingle with
the bustling passengers and pick up any and all information possible.
Since they knew so little of the language it was hardly likely that
Allan, Bumpus or Giraffe would meet with much success; but at least they
would be doing their best.
As usual, they depended a great deal on Thad. He had a happy faculty for
doing things; moreover, in this case, he was better fitted for catching
snatches of conversation on the part of the voluble French people than
any one of his comrades.
About ten minutes later Thad made signals to his chums, on catching
their eyes, bidding them join him. This they did only too gladly, for up
to that moment none of the trio had learned anything worth mentioning.
“It’s going to be all right, I guess,” Thad told them first of all.
“Then you’ve heard of a train we can take, eh?” queried Bumpus eagerly,
while a thankful glow began to appear in his eyes.
“Yes,” replied the other; “it seems there’s another road tapping this
place that leads to Calais, which, you know, is on the Channel, and the
terminus of a boat line coming from Dover over in England.”
“Sure thing,” remarked Giraffe; “and we figured that since England has
butted into this war game she must be sending her little army across the
Channel, or the Straits of Dover that way, to help her ally France hold
the Kaiser in check.”
“Well, they have a great need of every kind of car at Calais, it seems,
passenger and freight, to carry men and munitions from there into the
interior. So there has been made up a long train of empties that is
going to start across country right away, aiming for Calais. And the
railway people here have made arrangements to carry all those who want
to head that way, if they promise not to kick at the poor
accommodations.”
“Well, any port in a storm,” said Giraffe; “we’ll shut our eyes and go
in a cattle van if necessary and not say a single word.”
“Only too glad of the chance,” added Bumpus gratefully; “because once we
get to Calais we’ll be out of the line of the invading German army; and
it ought to be a whole lot easier for us to make Paris from that point
than away up here on the border of Belgium.”
“Yes, it would seem so,” Thad added, with a wrinkle across his forehead;
as if even at that time he might be having a faint vision of the
terrible difficulties they were destined to meet later on while trying
to accomplish their object.
“Lead us to it, Thad,” implored the impatient Giraffe.
Already they could see that some of the excited passengers had commenced
to move away. The word was being passed along the line that if they
chose to head for the city on the Channel there was an opportunity
offered, and few, if any, declined the opening, for they were fairly
wild to get deeper into their native country.
When the four American scouts, a little later on, found themselves at
another station and gazing upon a long string of traffic vehicles they
could not keep from exchanging smiles.
It certainly looked as though already the sudden and violent demands
made upon all the railways of Northern France for transportation on
account of the mobilization of the troops, with their batteries, and
horses, had caused a tremendous drain on their limited resources. They
did not have these things “down pat” to the minutest detail, as in
Germany, where every man, young and old, knew exactly what was expected
of him when a certain order went forth, and the whole nation moved like
a gigantic machine, in unison.
The cars were of a polyglot type. There were a few “carriages” as they
call the passenger cars across the sea, some first-class, others
descending the scale rapidly until they reached the lowest depth of
unpainted transportation vehicles, no doubt taken hurriedly from the
repair shops. So long as they were apparently sound, and would not break
down under a strain, they had been drafted into service.
Besides these there were numerous freight vans, much shorter than even
the ordinary open flat cars seen on all American railways. Box cars are
not in great use abroad, the goods being covered with heavy tarpaulins
instead.
Already most of the carriages had been reserved for the women and
children. Little did the four boys care about this. The day was pretty
hot, and the sun beamed down from a clear sky, but they were well used
to this sort of thing, and had no thought of venturing the first
complaint.
“Pick out as solid a van as you can find, Thad,” remarked Bumpus, as
they started to walk along this string of antequated traffic carriers.
“Yes, please do,” Giraffe chuckled, “for the sake of Bumpus here, who
needs to have things good and strong when he travels. No ordinary coach
will do for a fellow of his heft. How about that third van, Thad; it
looks as if it might be a fair article?”
Apparently the patrol leader thought the same himself, for he proceeded
to climb aboard, after tossing his bag and other “duffle” ahead of him.
The others copied his example without delay. Men were boarding the train
all along the line, picking out their locations as the whim moved them.
There was more or less laughter, and no doubt they joked with one
another in their native tongue; for never before had the majority ever
deigned to travel upon cattle and goods vans.
Men in uniform bustled around to hasten things. From this Thad judged
that there had a hurry call come for the means of transportation over at
Calais, where possibly British troops and munitions and batteries were
landing daily, and must be taken to the front in haste, for the German
invasion threatened Paris by now.
“Here we go,” sang out Giraffe, presently; “that must have been the
signal from the man in the motor ahead, to start the string moving. Yes,
we’re off at last, and over the border in France.”
Bumpus had managed to settle himself upon his bag, and was looking
fairly comfortable, though that anxious expression did not leave his
round face entirely.
The long and singularly mixed train pulled out of the border town.
People waved after it, for there was such a tingle of excitement in the
air these days all over the land that few could settle down to doing any
ordinary business. The younger men had rushed off to mobilization
centres, and were even now fighting valiantly on the front line, in the
endeavor to delay the forward push of the Teuton host, until the
defences of Paris could be strengthened. And while the hearts of fathers
and mothers went out to the boys in the French army in blue, at this
early stage of the great war they did not doubt but that the invaders
would be soon driven back to their Northern country.
While at the border town Giraffe had particularly noticed a man whom he
vowed paid unusual attention to them. A number of times the boy had
declared the other hung around as though trying to listen to what they
might be saying. And really Allan himself confessed that the mysterious
fellow did have some of the ear-marks of a spy, or secret agent.
Giraffe had made up his mind about that. He vowed the other was a German
spy who foolishly believed they must be English boys, and was watching
them for some strange purpose. In support of this rather wild statement,
Giraffe had even stated that it was already well known how the Germans
had planted a host of secret agents all over Belgium and Northern
France. Many of these people had lived there for a long term of years,
and were in daily touch with their neighbors, picking up all manner of
valuable information, which was regularly and systematically forwarded
to Headquarters at Berlin, to be entered in ponderous volumes in the
archives of the Secret Service, and to be used in event of war.
Every now and then Giraffe would refer to this unknown party. He seemed
unable to get the other out of his mind; but then that was Giraffe’s
usual way; for once he formed an opinion he always displayed
extraordinary obstinacy in sticking to it.
“I only hope that skulker got left at the post, and didn’t make up his
mind to go to Calais to find out what was happening there,” he was
saying, after taking a good look over their fellow passengers on the
van, and failing to discover any sign of the unwelcome one.
Thad and Allan watched the shifting scenery, and commented on its
similarity to the Belgian canal country through which they had passed
below Antwerp, only that now they met with occasional low hills, and
there were times when the motor seemed to be put to its best “licks,” as
Allan called it, in order to carry the long train over a rise.
Bumpus still sat there, balancing on his luggage, and possibly trying to
count the miles as they were left behind. Whenever he raised his eyes to
look steadily toward the southeast there appeared a wistful expression
in their depths that did credit to the boy’s faithful heart; because he
must be thinking just then of the mother he loved, and how she would be
eagerly awaiting his arrival in the French capital.
“We’re coming to another climb, it looks like, Thad,” remarked Allan
about this time, as he pointed ahead, and to one side.
The road made something of a bend in order to strike the hill at its
lowest point, and consequently they could see what lay before them. Just
as Allan had said, the train was soon slowly and laboriously ascending
the grade. Giraffe became interested, and soon expressed the opinion
that the little motor would have all it could do to drag that heavy
train over the crown of the rise.
“Still,” he added thoughtfully, “they seem to have enormous power for
such baby engines compared with our big machines, and I guess we’ll make
the riffle in decent shape. I’d hate to get stuck here on the slope, and
have to wait for help to come along so as to push or pull us to the
top.”
He had hardly said this when the boys felt a sudden slackening of the
motion.
“Oh! look there, will you?” almost shouted Giraffe, jumping to his feet.
“Something’s busted, and the train is going on without these four last
vans. There, we’ve commenced to start back down the slope again; and
say, it’s too late to jump off! Everybody hold fast, and set your teeth
for the worst!”