"Cambrai, I guess," exclaimed Bob, forgetting his breakfast as he stared into space with thoughtful eyes. "I wonder how much it means!"
"Don't know, sir, but I'll find out all I can," promised the sergeant, relieved to see the look of bitter depression gone for the moment from Bob's face. "They can't prevent the men talking together a good bit—we're so crowded up like, in our barrack."
The last two weeks had brought a crowd of French and British prisoners to the camp until it was filled to overflowing. But with every new arrival, rumor stole about that the Germans on the western front had paid a deadly price for each man captured, and that a far greater number of soldiers from the German lines were in the hands of the Allies.
But this was as much good news as Bob and Sergeant Cameron could summon to cheer them. No letters had reached them, nor any news that their own had been sent on. They might have been on a desert island for all the communication they could obtain with America. The little money Bob had hoarded was spent at last, and he suffered greatly from the monotonous and meagre diet. His repeated requests for advances of money from the Commandant had met with no reply, and he had long since ceased to expect any.
Sergeant Cameron at first had put a cheerful interpretation on this indifference and neglect of the prisoners. "It's plain they are hard up, Lieutenant," he said hopefully, "for they can't spare us a word or a thought. They have to keep the war going at all costs."
"I think they just don't care what becomes of us," returned Bob, in one of his hopeless moments. He had nerved himself to endure his captivity bravely, but the everlasting monotony and privation were harder for his active nature to bear than the fiercest battle. A letter from home, telling him that they knew where he was and trusted to his pluck and endurance would have done wonders for him, but none took the trouble to forward a letter into the heart of Prussia, to a prisoner from the nation that Germany now hated even beyond her hate for England—because it had foiled her imagined victory.
However, no one who is in reasonable health and not suffering keenly can be miserable all day long. At any rate Bob could not, and the fits of brooding that worried Sergeant Cameron did not last more than an hour or two. After breakfast Bob went outside and took a walk along his wired-in alley in the not very cheerful company of a British colonel who had recently been captured and couldn't get over the exasperating annoyance of being taken away just when he was most needed. He occupied Bob's old room and met his advances with friendliness, but had not recovered spirits enough to do more than talk about the beastly bad luck of his having managed to run right against that Boche patrol. Bob told him the rumors of General Byng's advance and awakened a spark of real interest in the Britisher, as well as another burst of anger at his own impotence.
"To think I might have been there!" exclaimed the captive colonel with longing eyes, a flush coming over his lean, weather-worn cheek. "We're out of luck, young fellow, and that's the truth—but I had some of it, at any rate."
"Yes," sighed Bob, vague thoughts of some desperate attempt at escape floating through his mind, to be impatiently dismissed at sight of the endless sentries patrolling their lengths of wire alleys. "A kangaroo with a machine gun might get away," he thought idly, "but I certainly can't."
The sun had not appeared for the past two days, hiding behind thick, gray clouds which gave a melancholy tone to the dreary winter landscape. Bob felt inclined to blame it as being a Prussian sun and unsympathetic to shivering young Americans whose fire-wood was not furnished in sufficient quantities. But it peeped out, mistily, an hour later when Bob went back to Bertrand, hoping for a change in his comrade's heavy, feverish stupor. The sick man still lay with closed eyes, breathing fast and hard, but as Bob approached him, his lids flickered open and his bright eyes fixed themselves upon Bob's face.