Shelled by an Unseen Foe | Page 3

watched the last person down the gang-plank, a weeping woman it was. Then they shouted farewell to the kindly shores, and the steadfast Lady of Liberty on Governor's Island. She seemed to salute the passing ship with her uplifted torch, and the boys felt that peace and safety and prosperity lay behind them.
Then some nights and days went swiftly by, and one morning the boys clasped hands and gruffly spoke their farewells. Nickell-Wheelerson went home to find that his older brother slept in a lowly grave somewhere in France. His father, dead of his wounds, lay in the castle hall, and the boy Nick answered wearily when sorrowing footmen called him "My Lord."
But that is really the beginning of the other story.
Zaidos hurried on his way alone, and one bright morning, after many adventures, stood once more in Saloniki.
A porter came up to him, and at the same moment a man in the livery of his father's house approached and saluted him. "Your father urges you to hasten, Excellency," he said.
"Is my father very ill?" asked Zaidos.
"Very ill indeed, sir," said the man.
They started through the station and as they left the building a man approached. He spoke to Zaidos, but the boy, having spent years of his life in America, failed to catch the rapidly spoken words.
He turned to the house-servant, who stood with bulging eyes.
"What does he say?" he asked.
The man was speaking violently, then beseechingly, to the stranger, who was in uniform.
"What is it?" again demanded Zaidos. He began to get the run of the conversation, but as he made it out, it was too preposterous to consider. The officer laid a hand on his shoulder and shook his head.
"You will have to come," he said. "YOU ARE WANTED FOR THE ARMY."
"But my father?" said Zaidos, alarmed.
The man shrugged his shoulders. "He will die the same whether you come or not. Come!"
A grim look came into the boy's face. It alarmed the servant.
"Go, go, master," he begged. "You do not know. They take everyone. What is to be must be. Go, I entreat you, without violence. I do not want to go and tell your father that I have seen you slain before my eyes. I will tell him you are here, and that you will come later." He drew back and bowed to the officer, who kept a hand on Zaidos' shoulder.
"Yes, tell him I will come soon," said Zaidos. "Go to him quickly."
The man turned and hurried away.
"Give up all thought of going," said the officer. "It is a pity--one owes a great duty to one's father; but we need you now. And the need of country comes first."
"But Greece is not in the war!" said Zaidos as they hurried along the street.
"No, not yet; but there are places enough to guard, so we need more men than we dreamed. But I talk too much. Here is the headquarters. Let me advise you not to bother the Colonel with demands to visit your home."
They entered the big, dingy room of the police station which had been transformed into a sort of recruiting station. The officer in charge was an overbearing First Lieutenant who was overworked, tired and irritable. He had come from a distant part of Greece, and the name of Zaidos carried no weight with him. He shook his head when Zaidos made his request. He even smiled a little. "Too thin, too thin!" he said. "I should say that all the mothers and fathers, and most of the uncles and aunts and cousins in the world are ill," he sneered. "No, you can't go. Get back there in line and wait for your squad to be outfitted."
Zaidos shrugged his shoulders and obeyed, well knowing that, once in uniform, even that display of feeling would be absolutely out of order. He had been too long in a military school to misunderstand military procedure, and he knew that whatever queer chance had placed him in his present position, the thing was done now. He was to see real fighting.
Zaidos had a lion's heart and was absolutely ignorant of fear, but he worried when he thought of the possible effect on his father. He, poor man, would feel that his natural wish to behold his only son once more had placed the boy in a position of the gravest danger; indeed, in the path of almost certain death. What the effect of this knowledge would be on his health, Zaidos trembled to consider. But he was powerless to avoid the shock to his father, and once more shrugging his shoulders he stepped into line.
After a tedious delay, during which the men and boys who were unaccustomed to any sort of drill shifted uneasily from foot to foot, shuffled, twisted, and fretted generally, while Zaidos alone stood