“AMERICAN WAR CORRESPONDENT IN PRISON
“Will Be Tried as a Spy!
“Associated Press Syndicate, Muhlbruck, via Brussels, November 13, (Delayed by censor).—Robert Russell, said to be an American newspaper man, has been arrested here and put under guard, pending trial as a spy by Gen. Haberkampf, commanding the division of the West Battalion. The Germans are taking every precaution to safeguard the secrecy of their maneuvers, and this arrest is said to be only one of their determined efforts to discourage the presence of alien war correspondents. Russell is in grave danger of being shot unless he can satisfactorily explain certain papers found upon his person at the time of his arrest.”
No wonder that both Ned and Alan turned pale and looked at each other in a dazed, stupefied sort of way. Bob Russell was one of their oldest and dearest comrades, a lad only slightly older than themselves, who had gone through innumerable adventures with them. He had so often accompanied them in sensational exploits, that his name was often linked with theirs: The “Airship Boys.” He had accompanied them on the famous twelve-hour flight of the Ocean Flyer from London to New York; he had braved death with them in Mexico when the Airship Boys put a stop to the smuggling of Chinamen into this country; he had proved himself an intrepid comrade when they had dared wild Indian tribes in Navajo land in search of the hidden Aztec temple; he had risked death with them on their dash for the North Pole.
The Airship Boys and their adventures have been written up in newspapers and books and Bob Russell was no small factor in the success of his friends.
Bob Russell! As tried and true a comrade as ever a boy had—always cheerful, full of expedients, and “game” to the core. They could hardly realize that it was he who was now threatened by such frightful death, without a single friend near to aid him.
“Poor Bob!” exclaimed Alan, and was not at all ashamed of the unaccustomed lump that crowded further speech from his throat. “Poor Bob!” he repeated.
Ned had dropped his face into his hands and with closed eyes mentally pictured the crowded, ill-smelling prison where Bob sat unshaven and forlorn, surrounded by other wounded and miserable beings who felt no sympathy for him nor even spoke his language—who only shrank with wide, scared eyes from the suspicious glare of the armed Germans on guard. Maybe Bob was thinking of him too just then, wondering what the Airship Boys were doing, picturing them skimming luxuriously out over the sun-kissed ocean in careless forgetfulness of him, their devoted comrade of past days.
Alan interrupted Ned’s mournful imaginings again.
“Just think,” he cried, “of all the terrible barbarities which the newspapers say that the Germans have inflicted upon their captives. Think, they may perpetrate some similar awful atrocity upon poor old Bob!”