CHAPTER XVI
SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE
Porky and Beany sat perfectly still, staring with round, bulging eyes at the Colonel. They did not speak. They just sat there and thought and stared, and stared and thought again. This was about the most stunning blow of all. They had known the mate throughout the voyage as a silent, kindly man who had treated them well but had not made the least impression on them otherwise. A spy! It couldn't be! Porky was conscious of a wave of horror as he told himself that there must be some mistake. Not the second mate! Such a nice man, always pottering about, always ready to answer questions, always interested in everything, always and forever asking questions himself, wanting to know everything about themselves and their home and their plans for the future.
And he had been specially interested in the Colonel—where he was going and what he was going to do.
Now that the boys, taking time to think about it, happened on that thought, it was rather funny what an amount of interest the old fellow had taken in trivial things concerning their beloved Colonel. But it had gone over the boys' heads because they were so accustomed to having every one think that the Colonel was about the whole thing, and to hearing every one talk about him, that the strange interest of the second mate did not raise a question in their minds.
They had merely felt the flattered importance that they always felt about anything and everything concerning the truly great and simple-minded man whom they were so proud to know and to be with.
For Colonel Bright was a truly great man. They were to learn that fact more and more as time went on, and as they saw him tried by circumstances that could only bring out the best and noblest in men. They saw troubled, perplexed, wounded and distressed. It was their great good fortune to feel that there were times when this great man really needed their boyish but deeply loyal and loving support. It was just as well that the future, so terrible and so bloodstained, was hidden from their young eyes.
It is enough for this story that already the boys recognized the gallant, simple courage and tenderness of the Colonel; enough that all their lives they were to be strengthened and ennobled by the example of his straightforward everyday life. When Porky and Beany had themselves become great men, when, in their turn, boys looked up to them with admiration and love, they learned to look back with boundless gratitude to the fate that had led them, through the Boy Scouts, into the friendship of Colonel Bright.
A faint inkling of this, passed through the minds of the twins as they sat waiting for the Colonel to begin his story. And each knew that the other felt it.
The Colonel regarded the boys with twinkling eyes.
"Sort of surprising, isn't it?" he said. "Not that this affair would ever have come into your scheme of things at all, but for one thing. I have got you over here, and in some ways it is positively the worst fool thing I ever pulled off—taking the responsibility of two kids like you, at a time like this."
"But, Colonel, please!" interrupted Porky. "Don't think I am fresh, but just this once, while there is no one around, and no one will know we are lacking in respect to you, sir, as a superior, please, Colonel, let me tell you—"
"Go on," said the Colonel.
"Well," said Porky, "looks to us as though we were going to land pretty soon, and we don't know where next nor anything about it; but please, Colonel, just as long as you can, please let us stick by you! We have got to; we promised Mrs. Bright; and, besides, we don't look young, do we, Colonel? Now, honest, we don't!" He felt of his chin. "The way it looks, we have got to shave pretty quick, by next year anyhow. And we are tall; we are tall as you; and we look older when we are good and dirty, and we will be that mostly over here, I guess. And say, Colonel, we ain't afraid; honest!"
"Oh, Lord!" groaned the Colonel. "That's the worst of it! If I could put a little wholesome fear into your heads, I would feel better. However, boys, I want your word of honor that you will never make any serious move without consulting me."
"We promise!" said both boys, and Beany as an after-thought repeated, "Not any serious in move."
"Then here is where we stand," said the Colonel, as the boys approached closer to his chair.
"In two hours we will disembark. The harbor is clear, and it is the first time in two weeks that any transports have been able to come in as near as this. It is a great chance. I am glad of this chance to tell you what the outlook is. I have been sent over here, boys, to work directly with General Pershing. We will be near and directly at the front all the time if our lives are spared. I did not know this when we started. It was all in the sealed orders that our late friend the mate was so anxious to get into his possession. But about that later. Just what our duties are to be I cannot tell until I have had a conference with the General. Here is where you come in. As I understand it now, I am to be in charge of a wing, not very many miles from headquarters. I intend to use you as messengers. It is not a light task. Heaven forgive me if I am the cause of bringing you to harm! But the fact remains that as I see things, one life, young or old, is no better than another in this great crisis. It is up to every human being to do his or her part. Fate has led you a long ways from home; and in spite of that coming crop of whiskers, Porky, you are rather young. However, as I said, that weighs nothing in the balance of necessity. Nothing! Man, woman, child, we all must help. Man, woman, and child, we have got to help, and now!
"I may not have another chance to talk to you privately for some time. A few things are to be impressed on your minds. The first is this. Take no foolish chances. Don't be foolhardy. We cannot afford to waste our tools. And in this struggle tools are what you are, not boys, not human beings that will feel cold, and heat, and pain and privations; just tools. So take no chances.
"We will go right from the dock to General Pershing. I do not know where he is. However, after I have seen him, I will know where to place you. He will tell me if my plan for you as I have outlined it is a good one. Rest assured that I will keep you as near me as I possibly can.
"I have told you my first order. No chances other than the chances of war. The second thing is to keep ourselves as clean and as well as you possibly can. Take every safeguard that you can possibly take. You do not want to be on the sick list the time when I most need you. That's about all, boys. Don't forget that I am always your friend."
The boys gulped queerly. Then Beany spoke up boldly.
"And don't you forget that we are your friends, too! I read a piece once in a reader about a lion that was all tied up with ropes and a mouse happened around and chewed him loose. You are a colonel, but we are your friends just the same."
The Colonel burst out laughing. "Chew away, old fellow!" he said when he could speak. "In the meantime let's get ready to leave."
"But, Colonel," wailed Porky, who never forgot anything and who had an amount of curiosity that later nearly lost the Colonel one of his "tools," "—but, Colonel, what about the mate?"
"By Jove, I forgot I promised to tell you about him! Well, two or three times Captain Greene thought his traps looked as though some one had been going through them, but he had everything locked up, and special keys made. These were on him night and day. But, you see, the mate knew a trick worth two of that. As he had the run of everything, he simply doped the cup of coffee the Captain always took before going to bed, and, while the man was under the influence of the drug, he simply went through things. Fortunately he was unable to find some papers that he was most anxious to got hold of, and in the meantime the Captain spoke to the ship's doctor about feeling queer and lazy in the morning.
"Because everybody is suspicious of everything out of the beaten track these days, the doctor took to watching things a little on his own hook. He finally analyzed some of the coffee, and that put him on tile right track. A smart lad, that doctor, I can tell you! But it looked as though the mate smelled a mouse. For days the Captain slept normally, while I commenced to get a dose of the same medicine. I did not know what was happening in the Captain's cabin, and no one was watching me. One night the doctor came in just after I had had my last cigar and sat talking to me. Blamed if I didn't go to sleep sitting bolt upright talking to him! He laid me down on the bunk, and my cigar stub came in for analysis. There was more dope! Fact! Things got pretty thick along about then. No one suspected the mate, but we suspected everybody else on the ship almost. Then little things commenced to happen to the ship's machinery. One little thing after another broke down. We seemed to be regular bait for submarines. He had some way of signaling them other than the ship's wireless. It is certain that he never got hold of that, and he did not succeed in putting it out of commission if he tried to do so. We don't know whether he did try or not.
"Then one night or one morning, rather, the doctor was found unconscious just outside the Captain's door. When he came to, he said he had felt uneasy about things, because nothing had happened for several days, so he thought he would take a look around. He was in his stocking feet, and just as he reached the Captain's cabin, he saw a form ahead of him against the white door. He approached cautiously, but could not tell whether the person saw him or not. He did, all right. As soon as the doctor was within striking distance, the shadow struck and down went the doctor. He was hit with some padded weapon a glancing blow that merely knocked him out for a few hours. If it had struck full— well, we would have been shy one good doctor.
"When he was all right again, we put our heads together, and decided to bait the midnight visitor with some bogus papers. Of course we still did not have the least suspicion as to the real source of the trouble.
"That mate was in our confidence, and was at all our consultations. We followed clew after clew suggested by him. And I will say they were good ones. We found part of the missing papers sewed into the bedding roll of a soldier who happened to be saddled with a jaw-breaking German name, the hangover from some ancestors. We trotted him off to the brig, intending to execute him later. Then we found a trinket belonging to the Captain in the pocket of one of the sailors, a Swede. The idea was, you see, to scatter our attention.
"I don't know where we would have ended if it hadn't been for a trick of the Captain's. He told the mate, and everybody else he could get hold of, that he had an ulcerated tooth, and was going to take a sleeping powder. He had some powdered sugar all fixed up. The mate was the only man in the cabin at the time, and the Captain said all at once something came over him as though a voice had shouted, 'Here is the man!'
"Yet not a line of the fellow's face changed. It was just sheer intuition. When the mate left the room, the Captain got hold of the doctor, who was the only one we were really trusting then, and tipped him off. He in turn came to me and I did my part by declaring loudly that I was dead tired and was going to turn in.
"Well, boys, at four this morning we caught our bird. The mate, of all men on the ship! They caught him red-handed, as they say, at the Captain's locker, and the doctor laid him out with a neat little tap from a billy, and when he came to we put him through the third degree. And we overhauled his things and found enough information to get him a string of German crosses a yard long.
"He was meek as could be; but I know now that was because he thought he had a good chance to got away somehow. We are near shore; and it seems he can swim like a duck—a long-distance champion and all that. He was so very meek about it that we were a little careless. I know it taught me a lesson. There are only two places where a spy is safe: in his grave, or in irons; and he's not very safe then. He watched his chance and when he got a second's show, he moved like a whirlwind. He knocked his guard down and grabbed his revolver, all in one jump, shot full at Captain Greene, missed him but winged me and killed the captain of the Firefly, poor fellow!
"Then he made for the door with Captain Green after him; and you know the rest."
"Gee!" said Porky.
"Sakes!" added Beany.
There was a silence. The Colonel looked at his watch. There was a sound of tramping from above.
"They are getting the men ready to go ashore," he said. "This is to be the last daylight disembarkation. Better go up and take a look around, boys. It is worth seeing. Are your things all ship-shape?"
"Yes, sir; all ready to pick up," said Porky, "Can't we do something for you?"
"Not a thing, thank you! This arm does not even burn now. When you see me on deck, just fall in, and don't let me have to look for you." He smiled and dismissed them with a nod as the doctor entered.
"Doc," he said as the young man proceeded to put a dressing on the wounded arm, "there go two, of the most remarkable boys I have ever known. I expect great things of them sooner or later if their lives are spared."
And with this prophecy, which was to be fulfilled far sooner than the Colonel dreamed, the subject was closed.
On deck the boys, with their bags beside them, watched the orderly rush of disembarkation with the keenest delight. They were as glad to go ashore as they had been to go aboard in that far, fair America that they were so proud and happy to call home.
Load after load of men left the side of the great ship, and the empty boats came dancing back from the great distant docks for other loads. The men were all happy and excited. The air was clear and clean as though it had just been washed, as indeed it had by a heavy rain the night before.
Overhead a couple of great planes circled above the harbor. The thought that they did not know where they were lent a touch of unreality and, romance to it all. The boats full of men went gayly off, the soldiers singing, calling, and whistling back to their mates still on board.
"Well, we are here!" said Porky soberly.
"Yep!" answered Beany. There was a long silence. Then, "We are here all right!" he repeated.
"Yep!" said Porky.
"I Wish we could call mom and pop up on a long distance and tell them we are safe. It's going to be some old time before we see them again!"
"Sure is!" agreed Porky, his face growing strangely long at the thought. "There's one thing we got to remember. We are here, and they were game to let us come. I didn't realize how game they were, Beans, but they sure were game! Well, we have got to pay them up for it, and the only way we can do it, is by first taking the best care of ourselves that we possibly can, and then by doing something to make them proud of us. Of course we don't know what we can do, but something will come up, I know; and it's up to us to do it."
"You bet we will!" said Beany solemnly. They turned again to watch the sailors.
Colonel Bright appeared on deck just then, and the boys hurried to his side, and stood unobtrusively behind him.
The next few hours passed in such a whirl that they were never clearly defined in the boys' memory. Event followed event with dizzying rapidity. Short trips on strange, camouflaged little railroads, alternated with dashes in strange, large, unkempt automobiles driven by haggard, desperate, cool, young fellows who looked and were equal to any emergency. Little was said. Occasionally they were personally conducted by one or two French officers who talked rapidly in their own tongue to Colonel Bright, who actually understood what they said, and fired back remarks almost as rapid as theirs.
"Machine guns!" Beany muttered once to his brother.
As they went on, the country commenced to show devastating effect of war. By the time darkness fell they were passing through a torn and tumbled landscape, with here and there a ruined village. They reached a place finally, unlighted, almost unmarked in the darkness. The boys wondered at the cleverness of the chauffeur as he silently rounded a corner and brought his car up to a ruined gateway, behind which a small squat building showed dimly.
Without a word Colonel Bright went rapidly up the path, the boys following closely behind, while the orderly carried the Colonel's bags.
A low tap on the door and it opened, disclosing a densely dark hall or room; the boys could not see enough to tell what it was. As the door was closed, a flashlight was pressed, and they were able to follow their guide across the space and through another corridor to a heavy door. A low tap and this door was opened.
As they entered, a man rose from a desk. He was gray and grizzled; a man whose keen face and eagle glance ware destined to live as long as history is written or read, a man in whom America rests her pride and hopes.
As they entered, he bent his piercing glance upon them; then, recognizing Colonel Bright, his face was lighted with a bright smile that suddenly wiped out its lines of care, and he stepped forward, both hands extended in greeting.
It was General Pershing.
The boys, standing well back in the shadows of the gloomy room, felt something catch their throats.
France… the firing line… General Pershing…
All at once, they had no doubts, no memories, no homesickness, no regrets. France; the firing line; General Pershing!
The boys stood rigidly at attention. The room was dark; no one saw them. It did not matter. Joy and courage and high hopes filled their hearts.
It was the beginning of their Great Adventure.