It was a year ago last fall. I was only eleven then, and we were all
travelling over in Europe--father, mother, Thad, and I.
Thad's my little brother, you know, two years younger than I am.
Well, we had been to London, with its jolly cabs, and to Paris, with its
funny sewers, and were on our way back from little Switzerland, with its
big mountains, when father took it into his head to stop for a week in a
poky old town somewhere in Germany.
Here we staid at a dreadfully quiet hotel on a narrow street, which Thad
called an alley; but father liked it because it was right opposite a
house where he used to board in a professor's family when he was a boy.
We had been in this dismal place for three or four days, when one
morning mother woke up with one of her nervous spells, so instead of our
all going off for a long walk in the country, father staid home with
mother, and sent Thad and me to take a stroll through the streets near
the hotel, where there was not any danger of our getting lost.
Well, we started out and walked twice around the market-place, stood
gazing for five minutes at some dusty cakes and candy in the
confectioner's window, and spent ten minutes more in watching the German
boys play their stupid games during recess at the Gymnasium, which is
not a gymnasium at all, but a grammar school. Then when they all went
back to their books again, we were left out in the roughly paved street
with no sidewalks, nobody in it to look at, no horse-cars to ride on,
and the sun shining as brightly as if we were having a jolly good time,
and were hoping it would not rain.
"Oh, how these stones hurt my feet!" exclaimed Thad, when we had
stumbled along in an aimless sort of way for a block or so. "Let's go
out in the country." And into the country we went, keeping on in the
same street until it changed from a street into a road on which we had
never been before, with tall trees in a straight line on each side of
it, and nice green grass all along the edge.
I was pretty positive, to be sure, that father would not have approved
of our going outside the town, but what else could we do to amuse
ourselves?
"It's better than bothering mother, anyway," I finally decided; and so
we walked and ran, played tag and counted trees, until we grew tired,
when, spying a nice shady spot under the brow of a hill, I told Thad
that we had better rest there awhile before starting back again for
dinner.
"It's a valley, isn't it, Max?" observed my brother, as we stretched
ourselves out beneath a large tree. He had just begun the study of
geography, and feeling that I should never neglect any opportunity of
training his young mind in useful knowledge, I at once began to point
out all the geographical divisions within view, and was much encouraged
by the respectful attention Thad appeared to pay, until I suddenly
discovered that he was asleep.
"Poor little chap!" I muttered; "I wonder if I oughtn't to wake him up;"
and while I was trying to guess whether we had come one mile or three,
in order to reckon how long it would take us to return to town, I--well,
I must have fallen asleep too, for the blue sky, and the green grass,
and the yellow sun finally got so mixed up in my mind that I wasn't sure
of any one of them, and then all was a blank, as authors say in books
when they don't exactly know how to describe a person's feelings in an
upset or a runaway.
Well, I lay there in that sort of a hollow place in the bank, with the
tree in front of me, and Thad at my side, for an hour or two, I guess.
Of course I don't know what went on around me during that time, so I
sha'n't attempt to tell; all I know is that when I had the natural use
of my senses once more, I heard such a horrible noise right over my head
as nearly made me lose them again.
Bang, bang, bang, and boom, b-r-r-r, bang!
What on earth could it all mean? I rubbed my eyes and felt of my ears to
make sure they were in good working order, and then ventured to peek out
around the tree which I have said stood directly in front of the little
hollow in the side of the hill which I had chosen for a resting-place.
Goodness! didn't my heart beat like sixty when I saw what it was that
made the racket. Soldiers!
There they were, whole regiments of them, standing on the edge of the
field opposite, just where it sloped down to form the valley Thad had
spoken about.
He had been waked up too by this time, and when he saw the troops over
there blazing away right for the spot almost where we were crouching, he
looked pretty well scared, I can tell you.
"What are they doing, Max?" he asked, grabbing hold of my jacket, and
squeezing up closer to me.
"I guess they're fighting," I replied.
"Who are they fighting with?" But just then another bang, bang, banging
over our heads answered the question, and revealed to us the terrible
fact that we were between two fires.
I won't pretend to say that I wasn't frightened, for I was, and I'll put
it to any other fellow of eleven if he would not feel sort of trembly
about the knees to wake up from a nap and suddenly find himself between
two armies firing away at one another for dear life.
"But I didn't know there was any war here now," continued my brother,
when there was a slight pause in the hostilities, as the newspaper
writers say.
"Oh, you never can calculate on countries over here," I returned, as I
wiped the perspiration from my forehead. "I s'pose the Emperor's got mad
with France again, and they're going to kill off several thousand poor
chaps, who don't feel mad a bit, to fix matters. Those are Germans over
there; I can tell by the uniforms, so of course the French must be on
our side. Now--" But at that instant the firing began again worse than
ever.
The smoke filled the little valley in clouds, so we couldn't see how
many men fell; and when it blew away, there was nobody lying on the
ground, so we concluded they must have cleared the field of the killed
and wounded under its protection.
Sometimes in the pauses of the shooting we could hear the captains and
generals shouting, and the drums beating, and see the flashing bayonets,
and the flags flying proudly.
"Perhaps they won't find us, after all," said Thad, during one of these
peaceful lulls; and indeed I had already begun to indulge myself in the
same hope, when what should the Germans do but rush down the opposite
bank, and prepare to charge right for our tree.
On they came, plunging over stones and ditches, swords waving, bayonets
flashing, fury gleaming from their eyes.
"Don't cry, Thad," I whispered, when there was only a few feet left
between us and the advancing army. "Come, let's stand out in front of
them, so they won't trample on us, anyway;" and summoning all my
courage, I took my brother by the hand, and stepped out from behind the
tree, facing the whole battle front.
As soon as the Colonel or Captain, whichever it was, caught sight of us,
he shouted out at the top of his voice; but of course neither Thad nor I
understood a word, although I supposed he was calling on us to
surrender.
Thinking this a much more comfortable way of ending matters than by
being put to the sword, I screamed out, as bold as I could: "If you
please, sir, we're Americans, and I hope you'll whip the Frenchmen all
to pieces."
I didn't expect he'd understand all I said, of course, although I was
pretty certain of America's being nearly the same in German as in
English.
But what do you think the man did? He said something to the soldiers;
then turning to me, he pointed to an opening in the ranks he had caused
to be made just in front of us, and at once understanding what he meant,
Thad and I ran for it, never stopping until we had left the soldiers far
behind us, when I thought it would be as well to call a halt, and
consider as to the quickest way of getting back to the hotel, for it was
by this time long after the dinner hour.
However, we managed to find the road after a while, and then we made for
the town as fast as ever we could. Of course we got a scolding for
having staid out so late; but when the story of the exciting adventure
we had passed through was told, I felt sure we'd both be looked upon
with more respect.
Well, father and mother listened breathlessly, and when I had finished I
asked father if he had heard anything about the invasion of the French
army. At that he broke out into the most frightful fit of laughter, and
really for a minute I thought that my account of the danger Thad and I
had been in had made him kind of hysterical (I always used to think it
ought to be _her_-terical, as men don't often get that way), until he
caught his breath long enough to say: "Oh, Max, Max! there wasn't any
French army there. The whole affair was merely a sham battle between two
of the German regiments for practice, and the only reason you didn't get
hit was because the guns were only loaded with powder."
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