THE CATSKILL VOLCANO IN ERUPTION
All day long the dull, drizzling rain continued, and as the hours passed their hope revived and their courage strengthened.
"Therre's one thing I'm glad of," said Archer, "and that's that I thought about putting that Gerrman soldierr's paperrs in the glove. I've got a hunch I'd like to know what that letterr says."
"I'm glad you did," said Tom. "I got to admit I didn't think of it."
By evening Tom's knee was much better though still sore, and his head pained not at all. They had but one thought now—to swim to shore and get into the mountains where they believed they could continue their course southward. Swimming to the nearest point on the east, or Baden bank, would, they could see by the glass, bring them into a fairly thickly populated district and how to get past this and into the protecting highlands troubled them. They had thus far avoided civilization and towns, where they knew the ever-watchful eye of Prussian authority was to be feared. They knew well enough that their wet garments constituted no disguise; but they could, at least, get to shore and see how the land lay.
They were greatly elated at their success so far, and at their providential reunion. Whatever difficulties they had encountered they had surmounted, and whatever difficulties lay ahead they would meet and overcome, they felt sure.
As the day wore away, the rain ceased, but the sky remained dull and murky. Their plan was to wait for the darkness and they were talking over their good luck and what they thought the rosy outlook when Tom, looking toward the Alsatian shore with the glass, saw a small boat which was scarcely distinguishable in the hazy twilight.
"I don't believe it's coming this way," he said confidently, handing the glass to Archer. But at the same time he was conscious of a sinking sensation.
"Yes, it is," said Archer; "it's coming right for us."
"Maybe they're just rowing across," said Tom.
Archer watched the boat intently. "It's coming herre all right," he said; "we'rre pinched. Let's get inside, anyway."
Tom smiled with a kind of sickly resignation. "Let's see," he said; "yes, you're right, they've got uniforms, too. It's all up. We might have had sense enough to know. I bet they traced us all the way through Alsace. There's no use trying to beat that crowd," he added in cynical despair.
Hope dashed when it is just reviving brings the most hopeless of all despair, and with Tom, whose nerves had been so shaken, their imminent capture seemed now like a kind of mockery.
"When I found you were all right," he said to Archer in his dull way, "and we were all alone here, I might have known it was too good to be true. I wouldn't bother now. I just got bad luck.—When I tried for the pathfinders' badge and tracked somebody that stole something," he added with his stolid disregard for detail, "I found it was my own father, and I didn't claim the badge. That's the kind of luck I got. So I wouldn't try any more. 'Cause if you got bad luck you can't help it. I dropped my knife and the blade stuck in the ground—up at Temple Camp—and that's bad luck. Let 'em come——"
"IT'S FIFTY-FIFTY,—TWO AGAINST TWO," SAID ARCHER. Page 153
This side of Tom Slade was new to Archer, and he stared curiously at the lowering face of his companion.
"That's what you call losing your morale," he said; "if you lose that—go-od night! Suppose General Joffre said that when the Huns werre hitting it forr Paris! S'pose I said that when my foot stuck in the mud on the bottom of this plaguey riverr!"
"I didn't know that," said Tom.
"Well, you know it now," retorted Archer, "and I don't give up till they land me back in prison, and I don't give up then, eitherr. And I ain't lettin' any jack-knives get my goat—so you can chalk that up in yerr little old noddle!"
"I guess that's the trouble," Tom began; "my head aches——"
"Can you swim now?" Archer demanded.
"You go," said Tom; "my knee's too stiff."
"If you everr say a thing like that to me again," said Archer, his eyes snapping and his freckled face flushing scarlet, "I'll——"
"I didn't think we'd start till midnight," Tom said, "and I thought my knee'd be well enough by that time."
The little boat, as they could see from the doorway, bobbed nearer and nearer and Archer could see that it contained two men.
"They've got on uniforms," Archer said, "but I can't see what they arre. Let's keep inside."
"They know we're here," said Tom; "they'd only shoot us if we started away."
Closer and closer came the little boat until one of its occupants jumped out, hauling it into one of the little rocky caverns of the islet. Then both came striding up to the doorway.
As soon as they caught sight of the boys they paused aghast and seemed to be much more discomfited than either Tom or Archer. Evidently they had not come for the fugitives and the thought occurred to Archer that they might be fugitives themselves.
"Vell, vat you do here, huh?" one asked.
Archer was managing this affair and he managed it in his own sweet way.
"We're herre because we're herre," he said, in a perfect riot of rolling R's.
"You German—no?"
"No, thank goodness! We'rre not," Archer said recklessly. "Are we pinched?"
"How you come here?" the German demanded in that tone of arrogant severity which seems to imply, "I give you and the whole of the rest of the world two seconds to answer."
Tom, whose spirits revived at this rather puzzling turn of affairs, watched the two soldiers keenly and noticed that neither had sword or firearms. And he realized with chagrin that in those few moments of "lost morale," he had been strangely unworthy of himself and of his scout training. And feeling so he let Archer do the talking.
"We're Americans."
"Americans, ach! From prison you escape, huh?" the younger soldier snapped. "You haff a peekneek here, huh?" And turning to his companion he poured a kind of guttural volley at him, which his comrade answered with a brisk return of heavy verbal fire. Archer, listening intently and using his very rudimentary knowledge of German, gathered that whoever and whatever these two were, they were themselves in the perilous business of escaping.
"They'rre in the same box as we are," he said to Tom. "Don't worry."
It did not occur to the boys then, though they often thought of it afterward, when their acquaintance with the strange race of Huns had been improved, that these two soldiers manifested not the slightest interest in the experiences which the boys had gone through. Almost immediately and without condescending to any discourse with them, the two men fell to discussing how they might use them, just as their masters had used Belgium and would use Switzerland and Holland if it fell in with their purpose.
After the generous interest that Frenchy and his people had shown and the lively curiosity about his adventures which British Tommies in the prison camp had displayed, Tom was unable to understand this arrogant disregard. Even a greasy, shifty-eyed Serbian in the prison had asked him about America and "how it felt" to be torpedoed.
It was not just that the two soldiers regarded the boys as enemies, either. They simply were not German and therefore nothing that they did or said counted or was worth talking about.
At last the one who seemed to be the spokesman said, "Ve make a treaty, huh?"
It was more of an announcement than a question, and Archer looked at Tom and laughed.
"A treaty!" said he. "Good night! Do you mean a scrap o' paperr?"
"Ve let you off," said the German in a tone of severe condescension. "Ve gif you good clothes—here," he added, seeming unable to get away from his manner of command. "Ve go feeshing. Ve say nutting—ve let you go. You escape—ach, vat iss dis?" he added deprecatingly. "Ve say nutting."
"And we don't say anything eitherr, is that it?" said Archer.
"Eef you talk you can't escape, what? Vy shall you talk, huh?"
Tom looked at Archer, who screwed up his freckled nose and gazed shrewdly at the Germans with a sagacious and highly satisfied look in his mischievous eye.
"That's the treaty, is it?" he said. "And that's just the kind of—shut up!" he interpolated, glancing sideways at Tom. "I'll do the talking—that's just the kind of stuff you'rre trying to put overr on President Wilson, too—tryin' to make the otherr fellerr think he's licked and then making believe you'rre willing to be generous. You got the nerrve (the R's fairly rolled and rumbled as he gathered momentum)—you got the nerrve to come herre with out any guns or sworrds and things and think you can scarre us. Do you know—shut up!" he shot at Tom by way of precaution. "Do you know wherre I think yourr sworrds and things arre? I think the English Tommies have got 'em. I know all about you fellerrs deserrting—I hearrd about it in prison. You'rre deserrting every day. Some of you arre even surrenderrin' to get a good squarre meal. And do you know what an English Tommy told me—you consarrned blufferr, you——"
He was in full swing now, his freckled nose all screwed up and rolling out his R's like artillery. Even sober Tom couldn't help smiling at the good old upstate adjective, consarrned.
"He told me a Hun is no good when he loses his gun or his sworrd. You don't think I'm a-scarred of you, do you? It's fifty-fifty—two against two, you pair of bloomin' kidnapperrs, and you won't tell 'cause you can't afford to! Same reason as we won't. But you can't put one overr on me any morre'n you can on President Wilson and if you'rre forr making treaties you got to get down off your high horrse—see? You ain't got a superiorrity of numbers now! You got nothing but fourr fists, same as we got. Forr two cents, I'd wash yourr face on those rocks! Treaties! I come from Corrnville Centre, I do, and——"
Tom laughed outright.
"You shut up!" said Archer. "You want to make a treaty, huh? All right, that'll be two Huns less forr the Allies to feed. We'll swap with you, all right, and I wish you luck. I don't know wherre you'rre going or what you'rre going to do and I don't carre a rotten apple. Only you ain't going to dictate terrms to me. You'll take these crazy old rags and you'rre welcome to 'em, and we'll take yourr uniforms if that's what you want. Treaty! We'll make a treaty with you! And we'll take the boat too, and if that don't satisfy you then that's the end of the what-d'-you-call it! You keep still!" he added, turning to Tom.