This fleeting visit by a troop of the enemy had aroused the Belgian village as nothing that had ever before occurred could have done. The women were out gossiping over the low fences, or else gabbling in groups in front of the houses. Boys, old men, and those who from some physical defect were debarred from participating in the active service of the army could be seen talking in knots.
Although as yet they had not heard the crash of gun, and seen men falling in scores before the modern rapid-fire guns, or those using shrapnel, it was getting pretty close to the border line with them. To have two rival forces visit the quaint and peaceful place only a few hours apart brought the war home to those who dwelt in the little Belgian town.
Giraffe had been greatly impressed. He was by nature a pugnacious sort of a boy, and it had always been a hard thing for him to subdue his passion when he first subscribed to the twelve cardinal rules that govern the life of a scout. Now and then that old spirit would persist in cropping out again, in defiance to the law of the scouts.
“Tell you what,” he was saying this morning, when, after eating breakfast at the inn, the boys started out in a bunch with an empty five-gallon can, determined to pick up enough petrol in small lots to serve to carry them over a good many miles of Belgian territory; “tell you what, fellows, I’ll be pretty much disappointed and broken-hearted if after being so near the firing line I don’t get a chance to glimpse just one solitary battle between these Belgians end the Germans. Somehow I’ve got a hunch that King Albert and his boys can put up a good article of scrap; and from what we’ve heard they’re giving the Kaiser the surprise of his life over at Liége right now.”
Thad told him he was foolish to wish that, because a battle was a terrible thing, and apt to give him a fit of the horrors every time he remembered what he saw.
“General Sherman knew what war was when he called it a pretty hard name,” the scout master continued, “and it’s silly for a boy to want to see men shot down as if they were ripe grain. A scout should know better than that, Giraffe, you want to remember.”
Giraffe did not make any reply, but from his manner it was plain to be seen that he was far from being convinced by Thad’s logic. What was bred in the bone it was very hard to beat out of the flesh; and in other days Giraffe had even owned a game rooster which he had proudly boasted could whip any barnyard fowl in and around Cranford.
They first got a few hints from the landlord, and then started out to try and get enough petrol to give them a fair start. Sometimes they met with luck, and then again their mission proved just as fruitless as had Giraffe’s on the preceding evening when on the way to this same town.
Still, when half an hour passed and they had managed to buy four gallons they considered that they were doing very well indeed.
“If we can double that in the same length of time we’ll consider ourselves pretty lucky,” said Thad; “but no matter how we come out we’re going to start about that time. Every chance we get on the road we can stop and hold up the little sign our friend the landlord has made for us, and which reads: ‘We want to buy a gallon or more of petrol, and will pay twice the regular price for it. We are American Boy Scouts trying to reach Antwerp. Help us out.’”