Army Boys on the Firing Line | Page 5

joined it. The four were the closest kind of friends and stuck by each other through thick and thin.
There had been one notable exception to the loyalty of the office force. This was Nick Rabig, a surly, bullying sort of fellow, who had been foreman of the shipping department. He was a special enemy of Frank, whom he cordially hated, and the two had been more than once at the point of blows. Rabig was of German descent, although born in this country, and before the war began he had been loud in his praise of Germany and in "knocks" at America. His chagrin may be imagined when he found himself caught in the draft net and sent to Camp Boone with the rest of the Camport contingent.
How the Army Boys were trained to be soldiers both at home and later in France; their adventures with submarines on the way over; how Rabig got what he deserved at the hands of Frank; what adventures they met with and how they showed the stuff they were made of when they came in conflict with the Huns--all this and more is told in the first volume of this series, entitled: "Army Boys in France; Or, From Training Camp to Trenches."
From the time they reached the trenches the Army Boys were in hourly peril of their lives. They took part in many night raids in No Man's Land and brought back prisoners. Frank met a Colonel Pavet whose life he saved under heavy fire and learned from the French officer encouraging news about his mother's property. The four friends had a thrilling experience when they were chased by Uhlan cavalry, plunged into a river from a broken bridge only to find when they reached the other side that the bank was held by German troops. How an airplane rescued them from German captivity is only one of stirring incidents narrated in the second volume of the series, entitled: "Army Boys at the Front; Or, Hand-to-Hand Fights with the Enemy."
Frank had been in many tight places since he had been in France. In fact, danger had been so constant that he had come to expect it. To have a feeling of perfect comfort and security would hardly have seemed natural. But now he freely owned to himself as he sat crouching low in the shell hole that his liberty if not his life was scarcely worth a moment's purchase.
Something of what was passing in his mind must have been evident to the German who shared the hole with him. Frank could not see his face clearly but he could hear the man shaking as if with inward laughter.
"Laugh ahead, Heinie," remarked Frank, though he knew the man could probably not understand him. "I'd do the same if the tables were turned. It'll be a mighty good joke to tell your cronies at mess tomorrow how the Yankee schweinhund thought he had you and then got nabbed himself. But they haven't got me yet. Those laugh best who laugh last, and perhaps I've got a laugh coming to me."
But just then the laugh seemed a good ways off. At any instant some one of the many passing to and fro might stumble into the hole and the game would be up. Or a flare from a star-shell might reveal him crouching beside his prisoner. His prisoner! What irony there was in the word under those circumstances.
Yet not all irony, for at the moment the thought passed through his mind, another thought told him how he might exercise the power that the fortune of war had given him over the German and by so doing effect his escape.
It was certain that in his American uniform he could not get through the Germans who surrounded him. His only chance would be to make a dash, and although he was a swift runner the bullets that would be sent after him would be swifter.
But in a German uniform--
And here was one in the hole right beside him!
The plan came to him like a flash of light and he started at once to put it into execution. But just then a sober second thought made him pause.
If he were captured wearing his own uniform it would be just as an ordinary prisoner, entitled to be treated as such by the laws of war.
But if they took him wearing a German uniform he would be regarded as a spy and would be shot or hanged offhand, perhaps even without the form of a court-martial.
He weighed the question carefully, for he knew that life or death might result from the way he answered it.
To help him decide, he raised his head with infinite caution to the rim of the shell hole and looked about him. In the faint light that came