Shelled by an Unseen Foe | Page 3

there couldn't be much
studying. Everybody tried to help, and everybody got in the way and
had to be stepped over or pushed over. But time passed, and good-byes
were said, and the night on the swift train passed, too; and when they
looked back, the following day in New York was a hurried whirl. And
then they smelt the unchanging smell of the docks; sea salt and paint
and tar.
They 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