“Bully for that!” ejaculated the other, immediately commencing to cut a few pigeon wings in the exuberance of his joy. “Now we’ll have a break in the dull monotony, won’t we, Tom?”
“I hope that may be the only break we will have,” he was told. “Yes. I was called over to the General’s headquarters, and he informed me that our captain had spoken a good word for us. He also assured me we really deserved some favor on account of the good work we had been doing ever since coming to the front.”
“Then we’re really going, are we?”
“As sure as anything can be in these queer times.”
“When does it come off?” pursued the impatient Jack. “I hope right away, because I’ll be counting the hours, yes, even the minutes, until we’re shooting off over the lines of the Crown Prince, and headed, perhaps for Berlin.”
Tom laughed.
“Oh! I don’t believe for a minute they’re thinking of any such big game as that. This is going to be much nearer home.”
“But there was a fellow, a Frenchman, in the bargain, who did drop a bomb on old Berlin not so very long ago, Tom,” expostulated Jack earnestly.
“Not a bomb,” the other informed him. “It was some sort of placard, telling the German people that a live French aviator had succeeded in reaching their capital. He was on his way to the Russian front, where I believe he finally succeeded in landing. It was partly to send dispatches across country; but more in the line of bravado. They wished to let those smug Berlinese know that their old capital wasn’t so isolated, as they had been believing.”
“Huh!” grunted Jack, “I’ve always said that if Berlin could be bombed just as Paris and London have been, all that stuff would stop. But when do we go?”