NEWS AT LAST
"Well, well, Nick! To think of meeting you here!" exclaimed Bob.
"Don't speak to the Hun!" some one called, and then, for the first
time, Ned and Bob seemed to realize that the little man, with whom
they had been on friendly terms at college, was an enemy.
But such was the case. It was only one of many queer incidents of the
war, and more than one fighting American found among the prisoners
sent back, after he and his comrades had cleaned up a Boche nest, some
man he had known back home--a former waiter at a club, perhaps, or a
man who delivered his groceries.
"How came you here?" asked Nick Schmouder, with scarcely a trace of
German accent, as he and the other prisoners stood with upraised
hands, though one of the survivors had to drop his as he fell in a
heap because of weakness from his wounds.
"We came here to teach the Kaiser how to walk Spanish," said Bob. "I
didn't think you'd fight against us, Nick, after what you learned at
Boxwood Hall."
"Ach! I was forced to," was the answer. "I am glad it is over--that I
am a prisoner. I did not like this war. I shall be glad when it is
over and you have won. It is terrible! Listen, I will a secret tell,"
and he did not seem afraid of the effect it might have on his
apathetic comrades. "Every time I shoot the machine gun I point it at
the ground so it will kill no Americans. I do not want to kill them."
"Hum, that's a good story to tell now!" said the incredulous officer.
"Take 'em to the rear with the other prisoners. Wait, though, this one
can't walk. He'll have to have a stretcher. I'll have his wounds
patched up. But take the others back. Corporal Hopkins!" he called.
"Corporal Hopkins is wounded, Sir," reported Ned, with a catch in his
voice. "He may be dead. He fell just as we stormed this place, Sir!"
"Oh, I did not know that. See to him at once. Here!" he called to some
stretcher-bearers who were coming up, "we may need you!"
They hurried forward, and, leaving Nick Schmouder and the other German
prisoners under guard, the officer, with Ned, Bob, and some other
Americans, went back to where Jerry had been seen to fall. It was just
outside of a little defile leading to the dugout where the machine
gun had wrought such havoc.
"There--there he is!" faltered Ned, as he pointed to the crumpled-up
body of his chum, and Bob turned his face away, for it seemed to be
the end of Jerry Hopkins.
There was blood on Jerry's head, and blood had seeped out from his
right leg, near the knee. Poor Jerry lay very still, and about him
were heaped others, who were unmistakably dead.
The lieutenant bent over the corporal and made a hasty examination.
There was relief on his face--relief which was reflected on the
countenances of Ned and Bob as he said:
"He's still alive, but badly hurt, I'm afraid. Take him back as gently
as you can."
Ned and Bob helped lift him on to the stretcher. Jerry did not move,
and so faint was his breathing that there were times when it seemed to
stop altogether.
Desperately as Ned and Bob wanted to go back to the dressing station
to learn how it fared with their chum, they must stay on duty in the
advanced position they had helped to win. It must be consolidated as
much as possible before night, or the Germans might launch a counter
offensive.
And so, when the Hun machine gun had been turned about, ready to rake
any advancing lines of its recent owners, other measures were taken
to insure the holding of the position won at such cost.
"I'd like to have a talk with that Nick," said Bob, as he and Ned
paused for a moment in their work of digging trenches.
"Yes, isn't it strange to meet him here like this? If he fired any of
the shots that did up Jerry Hopkins, why----"
Ned did not finish, but Bob knew what his chum meant.
Feverishly the Americans worked, and to good purpose, for when
darkness began to fall they were in strong front trenches with
supporting lines back of them, and the artillery was partly in place.
If the Germans wanted to take that particular hill again they would
have to work for every inch of it.
And now the commissary department got busy, and hot soup and coffee
was rushed up to the well-nigh exhausted men. Never was a meal more
welcome.
"But it doesn't taste any better than those doughnuts did," declared
Bob, as he sat on a pile of dirt, sipping coffee from a tin cup, his
face and hands plastered with mud and other dirt.
"You took an awful chance, though, Chunky," said his chum.
"No more than that Salvation Army man did. He was braver than I,
because it was my business to be where I was, and he didn't have to
if he didn't want to."
"Well, that's so," agreed Ned. "But say, I'm going to see if we can't
find out how Jerry is. If he--if he's----"
But he did not have the heart to finish.
As much had been done as was possible that day, after the terrific
battle, and with the arrival of fresh reserves those who had borne the
brunt of the fighting were sent to the rear to rest. Ned and Bob were
among these, and, obtaining permission, they went to the dressing
station to learn Jerry's fate.
Their hearts leaped with joy when they were told that, aside from a
bad scalp wound and a bullet through the fleshy part of his leg, their
chum was all right.
The high-powered bullets do infinitely less damage than the
old-fashioned slower-moving sort, and the wound in Jerry's leg was a
clean one.
Not so, however, the cut on his head, which was from a piece of
burning shell, making a jagged wound that, however, did not touch the
bone.
"He'll be back in line again in three weeks," declared the surgeon to
Ned and Bob, and those were the happiest words they ever had heard.
The next morning, after a feverish night in which they slept but
little, they were allowed to see Jerry, and they found him in better
condition, relatively, than themselves. For he had been given a bath
and cleaned after his wounds were dressed, whereas Ned and Bob were
still caked with the mud, dirt, and grime of battle. But it was
honorable dirt, as a Japanese might say. Most honorable and
cherished.
"Well, how about you, old man?" asked Ned, as the Red Cross nurse said
they might talk a little to their injured chum.
"Oh, I'm all right. Feel fine! Just knocked out a little. Save a few
Huns for me for the next rush."
"Oh, we'll do that all right," agreed Bob. "Too bad you had to get
yours just as we won the game."
"We won it, so I hear," observed Jerry.
"Yes, cleaned 'em up," went on Ned. "And whom do you guess we caught
in the last batch of prisoners?"
"Not Professor Snodgrass!"
"No. But some one who knows him. Nick Schmouder!" exploded Bob.
"What? Not the janitor at Boxwood Hall? The fellow who helped us get
the goat upstairs into the physics class?"
"The same!" laughed Ned; and Jerry chuckled so at the recollection of
one of the jokes of their college days that the nurse was forced to
say she would order his chums away unless he remained more quiet.
"I'll be good!" promised the tall lad. "But that is rich! How did it
happen?"
"Don't know," admitted Ned. "I'm going to have a talk with him if I
can."
"Let me know what he says," begged Jerry. "I don't suppose you have
heard anything about the professor or his quest for the two girls?"
"No," answered Bob. "I guess he'll never find them. It's worse than
looking for a cent down a crack in the boardwalk at Atlantic City. But
I don't suppose you could convince the professor of that."
"No," agreed Jerry. "I'm mighty sorry, too. You remember what he said
about losing the money he had lent to a friend of his and needing this
bequest from Professor Petersen. Well, if you see or hear from him let
me know. I won't be able to get about for a week--maybe more."
Bob and Ned stayed until the nurse sent them away, but they promised
to call again as soon as allowed. Then, as they were relieved from
duty, they went to an officer and received permission to talk to the
prisoner, Nick Schmouder, after explaining about him.
The man had been a janitor at Boxwood Hall when Ned, Bob, and Jerry
attended there. He had been a good friend to the three chums, and, as
mentioned, had assisted them in performing what they were pleased to
term a "joke."
The boys had forgotten all about him, and it was with the utmost
wonder they met him again under such strange and strenuous
circumstances.
"How did you come to get into the war?" asked Bob, as he and Ned
talked to the prisoner, who was in a wire cage with hundreds of
others.
"Oh, it was an accident, yet. I came back to Germany to see my old
father, and I was caught here when the war broke out. I had not served
my full time in the army, and so I had to go in again. Ach! how I hate
it. But tell me--why are you here?"
"The same reason that brought every other good American over," replied
Ned sharply. "We want to wipe Prussian militarism off the face of the
earth."
"And a good job, I say!" declared Nick Schmouder. "It is like a bad
disease germ. One of those bugs Professor Snodgrass used to show me in
the microscope. Ah, I wish I was back at Boxwood Hall with him. He was
a nice little man."
"Yes, he was," agreed Ned. "And you may see him, if you stay around
here."
"See him? Is the professor in the war, too?"
"Not exactly," Bob answered. "He is here on a scientific mission.
Something about war noises and insects. But he is after something
else, too. A friend of his, Professor Petersen----"
"Professor Emil Petersen?" cried Nick Schmouder in such a strange
voice that Ned and Bob stared at him. "Did you say Professor Emil
Petersen?"
"I don't know that I mentioned his first name, but it is Emil,"
answered the stout lad. "Why, do you know him?"
"Know him? Why, he once lived in the same German town where my father
and mother lived," declared the former janitor. "They were
friends,--my father worked for him and my mother had looked after him
when he was sick--and when the professor, who was studying or
something, had to go away, he left his two nieces----"
"Two nieces!" burst out Ned and Bob together. "Do you mean Miss Gladys
Petersen and Miss Dorothy Gibbs?"
"Yes! Those were the names," announced Schmouder easily. "He left the
two nieces with my father and mother. They were nice girls!"
"Listen to that!" cried Ned, thumping Bob on the back. "News at last!
We must tell Jerry this!"