Captain Lucy and Lieutenant Bob

by Aline Havard

"Ach, to-night, I think."

Bob nodded and went back to his fellow prisoners. He did the best he could for the wounded men, with the help of a little water, his handkerchief, and some strips torn from his shirt. The first-aid packets carried by the French soldiers had been used for their dressings at Petit-Bois, and Bob's had been retained by his German captor there, as had everything else in his possession except his money, which was carefully hidden in his coat lining.

After an hour's hard work, not unaccompanied by a good deal of pain on the part of the willing patients, he felt that he had done what he could toward improving their condition. With the realization of how little considerate treatment was to be expected by prisoners in German hands, he thanked his stars that he was at least whole and unwounded, with strength to face the worst.

When he had finished his task he sat down again by the car wall and went off into another dismal revery, broken only by pangs of hunger which brought to mind with tantalizing vividness the hearty satisfying food he had enjoyed such a short time before. He thought of Benton, too, and wondered what had become of him, and whether the Germans' respect for his prowess would bring him better or worse treatment at their hands. One thing he was sure of, they would do their utmost to extract from him some of the priceless information he had gathered in the past six months. Equally certain it was that they would learn nothing.

It was Sunday, Bob suddenly remembered. At home, on Governor's Island, his people would about now be starting peacefully to St. Cornelius' Chapel for the morning service. Their thoughts and prayers would be with him, he knew, but they would think of him as in the squadron's camp in the midst of friends and allies. He began calculating how long it would take for news of his disappearance to reach home. Taking into account the inquiries made along a portion of the French and British fronts to ascertain if he and Benton had come down anywhere behind their own lines, he thought it might be several days before word was ordered cabled to America. As long again, perhaps, before the cable reached there. He rather hoped for a delay. What good would it do them to know that he was lost? They would think the worst, though it was hard to realize just then that there was a worse fate which could have befallen him.

"Perhaps I can get word home that I am alive and a prisoner," he encouraged himself, though with no great confidence in any means of communication which might come his way. "It will spoil their Christmas, whichever they hear," he thought, with a sudden boyish longing at the word for a sight of home, made ready for Christmas, trimmed with holly, the big fir tree in the dining-room and each one of the family planning to add something to the day's celebration. The Gordons always managed to have a good time at Christmas, and their house was usually full of visitors on Christmas Day. Last year there had been a heavy snow-storm, and Bob had taken William out on his new sled until William's cheeks were so red and white Elizabeth thought they were frost-bitten and would not let him go near the fire when they came in. Cold seemed jolly and different when there was a warm house to go back to. Bob shivered at this thought, and shifted his back from a wide chink in the boards, but Elizabeth's name brought with it a rush of gratitude as he remembered his hour of deadly peril at Karl's hands.

At about dusk that evening the train stopped and the guards flung open the doors. They were in the yard of a large railway station, and on the tracks beside the car appeared a couple of officials and half a dozen soldiers with fixed bayonets. A little more bread was distributed among the prisoners, after which they were ordered to get out and form in double file, Bob to bring up the rear. Any movement was welcome to the men's cramped and chilled limbs, and even the weakest got up and willingly clambered down to the ground. The officials exchanged a few words with the sergeant in charge of the prisoners, who then gave the order to march. The escort of soldiers from the station fell in with the others in a double line about the prisoners and the party marched briskly out of the yard and through the station, where a scant number of travelers looked curiously after them, and on into the dimly lighted streets of the town.

Bob could not distinguish much through the dusk, except that the place appeared to be fairly large, with cobbled streets and crowds of people, all hurrying homeward at this hour, talking rapid German and exclaiming at sight of the prisoners as they passed, though Bob thought they must be a fairly familiar sight by this time. American prisoners would be a novelty, but they could not know him to be one. He looked longingly at the shop windows in search of something more to eat, but he saw nothing, and could not have stopped to buy it if he had.

In a few minutes they turned off into a side street, which soon became a road leading into the open country. Half an hour's quick march through the thickening darkness brought into sight a group of one-storied, barrack-like buildings from which scattered lights glimmered. The prisoners were led through a wooden gateway, along passages made by enclosing the space with wire fencing, and finally to one of the low buildings, where the sentry on guard at that point threw open a door at a word from the sergeant in command.

They entered a good-sized room, which was lighted by a lamp, and looked like a guard or orderly room. There was no furniture in it but a table and two chairs. From here the French soldiers were marched off immediately to their quarters, while Bob, after a moment's delay while the sergeant went out and evidently consulted some one, was once more led outdoors and along the barrack front to another angle of the building. The room to which the sergeant now admitted him was small and bare, so far as Bob could see in the darkness. It was also very cold, and the wind whistled against the pane of the one window in the opposite wall. At the right was a mud and brick chimney, as he saw by the light of a lamp which a soldier now brought in and stood upon a rough little table near the center of the room. There was a cot bed, too, he discovered, with a gray blanket thrown over it, and by the table a three-legged stool. The soldier threw down an armful of wood he carried and began building a small fire, to Bob's enormous relief. The sergeant had already gone out, closing the door after him. He evidently felt no further responsibility, now that his prisoner's safe arrival was assured, as Bob could well understand, recalling the number of armed and watchful sentries he had passed in the outskirts of the prison camp.