“Well, this is what I call rushing things some,” observed Giraffe, as he looked out from the window near his elbow and saw that they were already leaving the environs of the Belgian seaport behind them. “It isn’t as much as two hours ago that we landed here expecting to pick up Bumpus’ mother and then take passage across the English Channel to London, yet here we are heading right into trouble again, and like as not with a good chance of seeing more fighting than fell to our share before.”
As the minutes continued to glide by and they kept going at a good pace the boys began to hope they might by great luck manage to get by the scene of hostilities without being held up. Bumpus looked at his little nickel watch ever so often. No doubt the time dragged with him as never before, for his faithful heart must be filled with misgivings concerning his sick mother.
Thad, always observing, saw how the boy was worrying, and he several times uttered words of cheer that were calculated to buoy the other’s hopes up more or less.
“Take courage, Bumpus,” he told him, “and look back at our record when you feel despondent. We have always managed, somehow or other, to accomplish whatever we set out to do, you’ll remember. No matter how difficult the task may have seemed, we have been highly favored by good fortune. And we’ll come through this time with colors flying.”
“I ought to be ashamed to let myself have a single doubt, Thad,” Bumpus frankly admitted, as he turned his eyes upon the leader in whom he had such implicit faith, “when right now I’ve got the backing of the best pards that ever donned the khaki. Yes, I’m going to shut my teeth hard together, and tell myself that we’ve got to get to Paris, no matter if a whole German army corps stands in the way.”
“Shucks! I should say so,” Giraffe hastened to remark, for he had been listening to all that went on in spite of the jabbering of other inmates of the compartment, mostly French people hastening back home. “And, say, a railway train isn’t the only means of travel in these enlightened days; there are cars, and even aeroplanes, if you must come to it; though it’d have to be a buster of a heavier-than-air machine that could tote Bumpus fifty miles across country, I reckon.”
They talked from time to time as they continued to progress over the low country that lies toward the border from Antwerp, where canals seemed to predominate; and the boys were often reminded of the Dutch lands that had been reclaimed from the sea by the erection of the great dikes to shut the water out of Flanders.
They knew that as the minutes passed they were undoubtedly drawing closer to that region where trouble would possibly be lying in wait for them, if it came about that they were fated to be held up on their journey to the French capital.
Hence every time the train slackened speed Bumpus would glue his eyes on the landscape as seen through the open window, just as if he more than half-expected to discover a horde of Uhlans, with their lances and pennons and prancing horses, waiting to take the fugitives into camp as prisoners.
Finally as the afternoon began to wear away they did come to a halt in a small town. Thad announced that he believed they must now be on the border between Belgium and France. Here, if anywhere, they ought to be able to learn what the immediate future held in store for them.