In another moment Tom and Jack felt themselves surrounded by an overpowering number.
Hands plucked at them toughly from all sides, and their pistols and few remaining grenades were taken from them.
“Turn back with the prisoners!” cried a voice in German.
The two air service boys found themselves being fairly-lifted from their feet by the rush of their captors. Where they were going they could not see, but they knew what had happened.
They had been captured by the Germans!
CHAPTER XXI. THE CLEW
For one wild instant Tom and Jack, as they admitted to one another afterward, felt an insane desire to attempt to break away from their captors, to rush at them, to attack if need be with their bare hands, and so invite death in its quickest form. They even hoped that they might escape this way rather than live to be taken behind the German lines.
It was not only the disgrace of being captured—which really was no disgrace considering the overwhelming numbers that attacked them—t it was the fear of what they might have to suffer as prisoners.
Tom and Jack, as well as the others, might well regard with horror the fate that lay before them. But to escape by even a desperate struggle was out of the question. They were surrounded by a ring of Germans, several files deep, and each was heavily armed. Then, too, their captors were fairly rushing them along over the uneven ground as though fearful of pursuit. The air service boys had no chance, nor did any of their comrades of the patrol who might be left alive. How many these were, Tom and Jack had no means of knowing. They did not see any of their comrades near them. There were only the Huns who were bubbling over with coarse joy in the delight of having captured two “American pigs,” as they brutally boasted.