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.