Tom Slade with the Boys Over There | Page 5

to do would be to show it to any French people and they'd help me. He said it was a kind of--a kind of a vow all the French people had--that the Germans didn't know anything about. And 'specially families that had men in the Franco-Prussian War. He told me how he escaped, too, and got to America, and about how he hit the German soldier that came to arrest you for singing the Marseillaise."
The girl's face colored with anger, and yet with pride.
"Mostly what we came here for," Tom added in his expressionless way, "was to get some food and get rested before we start again. We're going through Switzerland to join the Americans--and if you'll wait a little while you can sing the Marseillaise all you want."
Something in his look and manner as he sat there, uncouth and forlorn, sent a thrill through her.
"Zey are all like you?" she repeated. "Ze Americans?"
"Your brother and I got to be pretty good friends," said Tom simply; "he talked just like you. When we got to a French port--I ain't allowed to tell you the name of it--but when we got there he went away on the train with all the other soldiers, and he waved his hand to me and said he was going to win Alsace back. I liked him and I liked the way he talked. He got excited, like----"
"Ah, yess--my bruzzer!"
"So now he's with General Pershing. It seemed funny not to see him after that. I thought about him a lot. When he talked it made me feel more patriotic and proud, like."
"Yess, yess," she urged, the tears standing in her eyes.
"Sometimes you sort of get to like a feller and you don't know why. He would always get so excited, sort of, when he talked about France or Uncle Sam that he'd throw his cigarette away. He wasted a lot of 'em. He said everybody's got two countries, his own and France."
"Ah, yess," she exclaimed.
"Even if I didn't care anything about the war," Tom went on in his dull way, "I'd want to see France get Alsace back just on account of him."
Florette sat gazing at him, her eyes brimming.
"And you come to Zhermany, how?"
"After we started back the ship I worked on got torpedoed and I was picked up by a submarine. I never saw the inside of one before. So that's how I got to Germany. They took me there and put me in the prison camp at Slopsgotten--that ain't the way to say it, but----"
"You've got to sneeze it," interrupted Archer.
"Yes, I know," she urged eagerly, "and zen----"
"And then when I found out that it was just across the border from Alsace I happened to think about having that button, and I thought if I could escape maybe the French people would help me if I showed it to 'em like Frenchy said."
"Oh, yess, zey will! But we must be careful," said Florette.
"It was funny how I met Archer there," said Tom. "We used to know each other in New York. He had even more adventures than I did getting there."
"And you escaped?"
"Yop."
"We put one over on 'em," said Archer. "It was his idea (indicating Tom). They let us have some chemical stuff to fix the pump engine with and we melted the barbed wire with it and made a place to crawl out through. I got a piece of the barbed wirre for a sooveneerr. Maybe you'd like to have it," Archer added, fumbling in his pockets.
Florette, smiling and crying all at once, still sat looking wonderingly from one to the other of this adventurous, ragged pair.
"Those Germans ain't so smart," said Archer.
The girl only shook her head and explained to her parents. Then she turned to Tom.
"My father wants to know if zey are all like you in America. Yess?"
"He used to be a Boy Scout," said Archer. "Did you everr hearr of them?"
But Florette only shook her head again and stared. Ever since the war began she had lived under the shadow of the big prison camp. Many of her friends and townspeople, Alsatians loyal still to France, were held there among the growing horde of foreigners. Never had she heard of any one escaping. If two American boys could melt the wires and walk out, what would happen next?
And one of them had blithely announced that these mighty invincible Prussians "couldn't even trail a mud turtle." She wondered what they meant by "looping our trail."
CHAPTER IV
THE OLD WINE VAT
"We thought maybe you'd let us stay here tonight and tomorrow," said Tom after the scanty meal which the depleted larder yielded, "and tomorrow night we'll start out south; 'cause we don't want to be traveling in the daytime. Maybe you could give us some clothes so it'll change our looks.