Hal also glanced up and down the aisle. Forward, the German guards had gathered together over a game of cards. There were no guards at the rear of the car, but both boys knew that the door was locked and the vestibule without, closed. It would take time to break through the door, open the vestibule and leap from the train.
“If we can get close enough to the door without arousing suspicion, there’s a bare chance,” whispered Hal. “If the train slows down a trifle and we pass through a woods or forest soon I am in favor of taking a chance.”
“Suits me if it does you,” declared Chester with a shrug of his shoulders.
“We’ll see first whether we can get close to the door,” said Hal. “You wait here a minute.”
He arose and moved up the aisle. A German guard espied him from the other end of the car. “Sit down!” he commanded in a gruff voice.
Hal turned and walked forward in the car.
“Just stretching my legs a bit,” the boy said with a smile.
The German grunted, but made no reply.
Several times Hal paced back and forth through the car, stopping now and then for a word with some of the other prisoners. Eventually the German guards seemed to forget him entirely. Then Hal sat down on the arm of a seat near the door.
Chester, who had been watching Hal closely, now also arose and began pacing up and down, at last stopping close to Hal near the rear door of the car.