Chapter 6

THE FRETFUL ROAR OF BATTLE.

Rod held his breath and listened. Though his nerves were quivering with excitement he could hold himself in check wonderfully well. Josh was breathing heavily, while Hanky Panky lay quite still; somehow Rod half suspected that the other might also have been aroused, and was, like himself, listening with bated breath to find out what had caused that slight noise close by.

A thrill passed through Rod when something touched him. Then he suddenly realised that it was his bed-fellow, Hanky Panky, wishing to be reassured; and accordingly Rod gave him a slight nudge with his elbow.

Something moved again, and, on straining his vision, for the room was fairly dark, Rod managed to discover what seemed to be the bent-over figure of a man. He guessed instinctively that it was no common thief who had managed to enter their chamber in this Calais inn at the dead of night, meaning to steal money, or any other valuable he could get his hands on.

Jules must have managed to follow after them, and was also in the French city by the sea, which later on the Kaiser became so wild to possess in order to harass the coast of England twenty miles away that he ordered mad charges on the part of his men, and thousands on thousands were slaughtered without accomplishing any favorable result.

Rod did not mean to lie quietly there and allow this sneak-thief time to rummage around. Of course the precious paper wanted by Jules was securely hidden; but for all that it went against his grain to allow such liberties.

Managing to get his mouth close to the ear of Hanky Panky he whispered:

"Shout when I do, and jump out of bed!"

The other gave a sign to the effect that he heard and understood; although this consisted only of a nudge with his knee it was sufficient to tell Rod the game was ready for touching off.

When both of them started to yell the effect was weird, and must have given poor, unsuspicious Josh the scare of his life; for he rolled out of bed and commenced to thresh wildly about him, perhaps under the impression that dreams were realities and his clothes actually on fire.

Rod had eyes only for the dusky figure of the unwelcome intruder. The man made a headlong dive for the open window through which he evidently must have entered the room of the inn. It was all of ten feet, perhaps twelve, to the ground, and he went plunging through space like a huge frog.

They heard him strike heavily, though he managed to gain his feet, and go limping away, groaning as he vanished in the darkness.

Of course there was more or less excitement about the inn. People could be heard calling out as they thrust their heads from the windows. Some men who had been lying asleep in the wagon-yard near by came hurrying up, asking if it was a fire.

Rod explained to the landlord, who appeared, candle in hand; and as no damage had been done the excitement soon quieted down. The boys, however, decided to set a trap by means of a cord, that would warn them if any one again attempted to enter their room by that exposed window.

Apparently the failure of his plan discouraged the schemer, for they were not annoyed any further during the remainder of the night. With the coming of morning they ate an early breakfast, settled their reckoning with the French landlord, who insisted on apologizing profusely for their being so rudely disturbed, just as if he was to blame, and then once more mounted on their reliable motorcycles the trio of boys started forth.

It was a fine morning in early September. All Nature seemed smiling, and it required quite a stretch of the imagination to realize that not so very far away from this fair spot two million determined soldiers were facing one another, bent on slaughter unparalleled. The Battle of the Marne was even then opening, with the fate of fair Paris trembling in the balance.

One thing they soon noticed, which was that the road they were following now seemed to keep even with a railway line, over which trains were passing at a dizzy speed, all heading in the same direction, toward Paris.

Every time one of these was sighted the boys could see that the passengers were wholly soldiers. Sometimes they wore the blue coats of the French, with the beloved red trousers, which have been so dear to the hearts of the fighting men of the republic from away back to the time of Napoleon; then again the dull khaki of the British regulars predominated. They occupied first-class carriages, freight vans, cattle cars--anything sufficed so long as it allowed them to get closer to where a chance for glory awaited them.

All these things kept the boys in a constant condition of expectancy. As the morning wore away and they continued to make good headway Josh even found himself indulging in the hope that they would reach the scene of activity before many hours had elapsed.

Once, when they had halted at a wayside farmhouse to see if anything in the shape of a lunch could be secured for love or money, he even called the attention of his two mates to a faint rumbling far away in the distance.

"As sure as you live, fellows," Josh went on to say eagerly, "that must be made by some of those monster guns the Germans are rolling along with them, meaning to batter down the forts defending Paris, just like they did the steel-domed ones up at Liege and Namur in Belgium, as we know happened."

Rod was not quite so positive about it. They had covered many miles, because of good roads, and the few obstacles encountered, but he hardly believed they could be so close to Paris as that.

"I can see something low down ahead of us that may be clouds," Hanky Panky now asserted.

"More'n likely that's the smoke of the battle that's raging over yonder," declared the positive Josh, who always had to be wrestled with before he could be convinced that he was wrong.

"No matter which is the correct solution of the puzzle," laughed Rod, not wishing to take sides against either of his chums, "we're meaning to go ahead after we see if we can get some grub at this little farmhouse."

Fortune played them a kind stroke, for the farmer's wife, a voluble little French woman, who had a husband and three sons in the army, on learning that they were actually American boys, insisted on their settling down while she cooked them a fine dinner.

It turned out that Madame had herself spent several years in America, and even then had relatives living in the French Quarter in New York City. She asked them a multitude of questions, and was especially anxious to learn if the great republic across the sea would align itself with the Entente Allies, who were now, she insisted, engaged in fighting the battles of the whole world for freedom from military domination.

Taken altogether, the boys quite enjoyed that hour at noon. They learned considerable about things that interested them, especially the lay of the land ahead, and where they might expect to come upon trouble in meeting some of the troops engaged in the fighting.

Josh was especially tickled when she assured them that the dull throbbing sound they heard almost constantly was indeed the fretful murmur of big guns. Being a French woman, and very sanguine with regard to the valor of her countrymen, the farmer's wife could already in imagination see the beaten Germans fleeing in mad haste before the invincible soldiers of the republic.

In this humor then they once more started forth, feeling considerably refreshed after that fine meal. Indeed, Rod had been unable to make the little patriotic woman accept the three francs he offered her; and watching his chance he had laid the money on the table where she must later on find it.

An hour later and the throbbing had grown much more perceptible, showing that they must be rapidly drawing closer to where the vast armies were marching and countermarching, with the field batteries in almost constant action.

They understood that several German armies were approaching Paris at the same time, one coming from the north, another veering more to the east, but the most dangerous of all, that commanded by the clever Von Kluck, swinging around so as to come down on the devoted French capital from the northwest.

More than forty years had passed since another hostile army had laid siege to Paris and taken the gay city after many months of desperate fighting. Rod wondered whether history was going to be repeated now. He felt sure that if once those Germans managed to get their terrible forty-two centimetre guns busy, no fort was capable of standing up under their frightful pounding.

So the afternoon began to wear away, and all this while the motors hummed cheerily, as they worked unceasingly, carrying the three bold riders closer and closer to where the greatest battle of the age was being fought to a finish.

There was a sudden whoop from the rear, where Hanky Panky held his place. When the others managed to glance around, almost afraid that they would find him in the ditch alongside the road, with his machine a wreck, they discovered Hanky pointing wildly overhead, while at the same time he shouted:

"Looks like old times, fellows, to see that aeroplane spinning along up there half a mile high; and say, it's sure a German Taube in the bargain. How about that same, Rob; you ought to know what they look like?"