Then followed some more conversation between Giraffe and the soldier; after which the former turned to his comrades with a look of pain on his long face.
“He says we’ve got to turn and go back to Cologne again, boys,” Giraffe informed them. “He has his orders to not let a single person cross the bridge who doesn’t live around here, and is known.”
“But we are Americans, and he might have some consideration for us,” complained Allan, though he knew just as well as anything, from the severe look of the soldier, that talking would be useless.
“It makes no difference,” Giraffe said, “orders are orders with him. I really believe if the Kaiser himself should come along he’d have to go back again. He says we might as well give over our foolish scheme of getting across the border into Belgium, now that war has been declared, and the fighting is going on.”
Poor Bumpus looked heart-broken.
“Then we’ll have to give up this beautiful car, and just when we were getting so used to it, too,” he fretted, as though that were the worst and most cruel blow of all.
Thad knew it was folly to think of trying to swerve that old man, who had an iron jaw, and may have been with the army many years ago when Paris was taken and France humbled.
“Well, we must make out we’re going to do what he suggests, anyway,” he said, in a low tone to the others.
Then he began to maneuvre so as to make the turn. It required some dexterity, for the old car did not respond to the wheel very readily. In the end, however, the turn was negotiated successfully, without any accident. Bumpus had been clutching the side nearest him as though fearful lest they might be precipitated down the embankment into the river.
It was with despondent faces that the boys started back along the road which they had so recently traveled in such high spirits. Bumpus, however, believed that things were not utterly hopeless. He had caught the words spoken by Thad, and to his mind they could have but one meaning.