CHAPTER III

DOWN THE SLOPE

Upon hearing this unpleasant news poor Bumpus looked broken-hearted. He seemed to see a host of obstacles confronting him. Paris must have been something like a thousand miles away just then, according to his enlarged view.

“Just like the luck,” he sighed desolately; “things were moving along too fine to last. I had a sneaking idea in my mind something was bound to blow up before long. What under the sun _will_ we do, Thad?”

“Not give up our plan of getting to Paris, for one thing,” replied the leader firmly, with that determined look on his face the others knew so well.

“Hurrah!” exclaimed Giraffe; “that’s the stuff I like to hear! _Nil desperandum_ it is, Bumpus, and we’ll carry it out on that line if it takes all the balance of the summer. Grant said that, but any fellow with a backbone can feel it.”

“First of all,” continued the practical Thad, “I’m meaning to skirmish around some more and find out what can be done. You see, all the passengers have been pulled out of the carriages. Listen to them babble, will you? They are mostly French, and as excitable as wildfire. Everybody wants to get away from the border here in a hurry. Their dear old France lies just over yonder, and they’re bound to travel if it has to be on foot.”

“Oh, my stars!” ejaculated Bumpus, and then he stopped short, remembering that much as he disliked walking any great distance, he should be the last one of the quartette to complain now, for it was his errand that beckoned them on to Paris.

They immediately bestirred themselves. Each fellow was to mingle with the bustling passengers and pick up any and all information possible. Since they knew so little of the language it was hardly likely that Allan, Bumpus or Giraffe would meet with much success; but at least they would be doing their best.

As usual, they depended a great deal on Thad. He had a happy faculty for doing things; moreover, in this case, he was better fitted for catching snatches of conversation on the part of the voluble French people than any one of his comrades.

About ten minutes later Thad made signals to his chums, on catching their eyes, bidding them join him. This they did only too gladly, for up to that moment none of the trio had learned anything worth mentioning.

“It’s going to be all right, I guess,” Thad told them first of all.

“Then you’ve heard of a train we can take, eh?” queried Bumpus eagerly, while a thankful glow began to appear in his eyes.

“Yes,” replied the other; “it seems there’s another road tapping this place that leads to Calais, which, you know, is on the Channel, and the terminus of a boat line coming from Dover over in England.”

“Sure thing,” remarked Giraffe; “and we figured that since England has butted into this war game she must be sending her little army across the Channel, or the Straits of Dover that way, to help her ally France hold the Kaiser in check.”

“Well, they have a great need of every kind of car at Calais, it seems, passenger and freight, to carry men and munitions from there into the interior. So there has been made up a long train of empties that is going to start across country right away, aiming for Calais. And the railway people here have made arrangements to carry all those who want to head that way, if they promise not to kick at the poor accommodations.”

“Well, any port in a storm,” said Giraffe; “we’ll shut our eyes and go in a cattle van if necessary and not say a single word.”

“Only too glad of the chance,” added Bumpus gratefully; “because once we get to Calais we’ll be out of the line of the invading German army; and it ought to be a whole lot easier for us to make Paris from that point than away up here on the border of Belgium.”

“Yes, it would seem so,” Thad added, with a wrinkle across his forehead; as if even at that time he might be having a faint vision of the terrible difficulties they were destined to meet later on while trying to accomplish their object.

“Lead us to it, Thad,” implored the impatient Giraffe.

Already they could see that some of the excited passengers had commenced to move away. The word was being passed along the line that if they chose to head for the city on the Channel there was an opportunity offered, and few, if any, declined the opening, for they were fairly wild to get deeper into their native country.

When the four American scouts, a little later on, found themselves at another station and gazing upon a long string of traffic vehicles they could not keep from exchanging smiles.

It certainly looked as though already the sudden and violent demands made upon all the railways of Northern France for transportation on account of the mobilization of the troops, with their batteries, and horses, had caused a tremendous drain on their limited resources. They did not have these things “down pat” to the minutest detail, as in Germany, where every man, young and old, knew exactly what was expected of him when a certain order went forth, and the whole nation moved like a gigantic machine, in unison.

The cars were of a polyglot type. There were a few “carriages” as they call the passenger cars across the sea, some first-class, others descending the scale rapidly until they reached the lowest depth of unpainted transportation vehicles, no doubt taken hurriedly from the repair shops. So long as they were apparently sound, and would not break down under a strain, they had been drafted into service.

Besides these there were numerous freight vans, much shorter than even the ordinary open flat cars seen on all American railways. Box cars are not in great use abroad, the goods being covered with heavy tarpaulins instead.

Already most of the carriages had been reserved for the women and children. Little did the four boys care about this. The day was pretty hot, and the sun beamed down from a clear sky, but they were well used to this sort of thing, and had no thought of venturing the first complaint.

“Pick out as solid a van as you can find, Thad,” remarked Bumpus, as they started to walk along this string of antequated traffic carriers.

“Yes, please do,” Giraffe chuckled, “for the sake of Bumpus here, who needs to have things good and strong when he travels. No ordinary coach will do for a fellow of his heft. How about that third van, Thad; it looks as if it might be a fair article?”

Apparently the patrol leader thought the same himself, for he proceeded to climb aboard, after tossing his bag and other “duffle” ahead of him. The others copied his example without delay. Men were boarding the train all along the line, picking out their locations as the whim moved them. There was more or less laughter, and no doubt they joked with one another in their native tongue; for never before had the majority ever deigned to travel upon cattle and goods vans.

Men in uniform bustled around to hasten things. From this Thad judged that there had a hurry call come for the means of transportation over at Calais, where possibly British troops and munitions and batteries were landing daily, and must be taken to the front in haste, for the German invasion threatened Paris by now.

“Here we go,” sang out Giraffe, presently; “that must have been the signal from the man in the motor ahead, to start the string moving. Yes, we’re off at last, and over the border in France.”

Bumpus had managed to settle himself upon his bag, and was looking fairly comfortable, though that anxious expression did not leave his round face entirely.

The long and singularly mixed train pulled out of the border town. People waved after it, for there was such a tingle of excitement in the air these days all over the land that few could settle down to doing any ordinary business. The younger men had rushed off to mobilization centres, and were even now fighting valiantly on the front line, in the endeavor to delay the forward push of the Teuton host, until the defences of Paris could be strengthened. And while the hearts of fathers and mothers went out to the boys in the French army in blue, at this early stage of the great war they did not doubt but that the invaders would be soon driven back to their Northern country.

While at the border town Giraffe had particularly noticed a man whom he vowed paid unusual attention to them. A number of times the boy had declared the other hung around as though trying to listen to what they might be saying. And really Allan himself confessed that the mysterious fellow did have some of the ear-marks of a spy, or secret agent.

Giraffe had made up his mind about that. He vowed the other was a German spy who foolishly believed they must be English boys, and was watching them for some strange purpose. In support of this rather wild statement, Giraffe had even stated that it was already well known how the Germans had planted a host of secret agents all over Belgium and Northern France. Many of these people had lived there for a long term of years, and were in daily touch with their neighbors, picking up all manner of valuable information, which was regularly and systematically forwarded to Headquarters at Berlin, to be entered in ponderous volumes in the archives of the Secret Service, and to be used in event of war.

Every now and then Giraffe would refer to this unknown party. He seemed unable to get the other out of his mind; but then that was Giraffe’s usual way; for once he formed an opinion he always displayed extraordinary obstinacy in sticking to it.

“I only hope that skulker got left at the post, and didn’t make up his mind to go to Calais to find out what was happening there,” he was saying, after taking a good look over their fellow passengers on the van, and failing to discover any sign of the unwelcome one.

Thad and Allan watched the shifting scenery, and commented on its similarity to the Belgian canal country through which they had passed below Antwerp, only that now they met with occasional low hills, and there were times when the motor seemed to be put to its best “licks,” as Allan called it, in order to carry the long train over a rise.

Bumpus still sat there, balancing on his luggage, and possibly trying to count the miles as they were left behind. Whenever he raised his eyes to look steadily toward the southeast there appeared a wistful expression in their depths that did credit to the boy’s faithful heart; because he must be thinking just then of the mother he loved, and how she would be eagerly awaiting his arrival in the French capital.

“We’re coming to another climb, it looks like, Thad,” remarked Allan about this time, as he pointed ahead, and to one side.

The road made something of a bend in order to strike the hill at its lowest point, and consequently they could see what lay before them. Just as Allan had said, the train was soon slowly and laboriously ascending the grade. Giraffe became interested, and soon expressed the opinion that the little motor would have all it could do to drag that heavy train over the crown of the rise.

“Still,” he added thoughtfully, “they seem to have enormous power for such baby engines compared with our big machines, and I guess we’ll make the riffle in decent shape. I’d hate to get stuck here on the slope, and have to wait for help to come along so as to push or pull us to the top.”

He had hardly said this when the boys felt a sudden slackening of the motion.

“Oh! look there, will you?” almost shouted Giraffe, jumping to his feet. “Something’s busted, and the train is going on without these four last vans. There, we’ve commenced to start back down the slope again; and say, it’s too late to jump off! Everybody hold fast, and set your teeth for the worst!”