“Here, cheer up, Bumpus; don’t look like you’d lost your last friend,” the boy with the long neck told him. “Remember what Thad said about our hanging to you all the way through, don’t you? Well, it still goes. Even the whole German army can’t keep us from getting over into Belgium, and hiking for old Antwerp. We’ll pull up there sooner or later in pretty fair shape, and smuggle Ma Hawtree across the Channel to England’s shores, mark my words if we don’t.”
Thad and Allan both said something along the same lines. Perhaps they may not have felt quite so sanguine as Giraffe, but that did not prevent them from trying to bolster up the sagging courage of Bumpus.
Of course the latter began to show immediate signs of renewed hope. How could it be otherwise when he had the backing of such loyal chums?
“But what can we do when the whole country is just swarming with soldiers, all heading in the direction of the border?” Bumpus wanted to know. “We’ve got our passports, I admit, but in time of war they wouldn’t be worth the paper they’re written on. And, Thad, no common person can ride on one of the trains these days, I’m sure.”
“Yes, that’s right, Bumpus,” the other admitted, “and in making up our plans we must omit travel in the regular way.”
“The border is something like forty miles away from here, I should say,” suggested Allan, who had of course looked the thing up on the map.
“There’s the Netherlands a bit closer,” Thad explained, “if we chose to cross over the line; but we might find it hard to get into Belgium that way. One thing sure, we must be on the move to-day.”
“Do you mean we’ll hoof it, Thad?” demanded Giraffe, who, being a good walker, evidently did not see any particular difficulty about managing twenty to thirty miles a day over good summer roads.
With Bumpus it was quite another matter, and he held his breath while waiting to hear what the patrol leader had to say.
“If we have to we might make it,” Thad presently returned, as though he had considered the matter himself at some previous time. “Then who knows but what we might be lucky enough to run across some man owning a car, who would either rent it to us or give us a lift to the border.”