"Stop talking rot, Nobby! We're alone for a moment, but you never know when the train'll stop and the guard'll put his head in. 'Nearer Germany,' Jim said."
"Aye—sure," the latter grunted. "I'm thinking of it all the time. Here are we—come all this way, been through all these things—and say, boys, we've enjoyed it, haven't we?"
"Aye, aye," they grunted.
"Well, we've been all through these times waitin' for our boys to come out and join in with 'em, and then we gets scooped up by the Hun, and won't have a chance of seein' all the fightin'."
"No?" lisped Larry. "I ain't so sure. I ain't going to Germany, Jim, not if I can help it. See here, chums! we're gettin' near Germany, and we've got to do something."
That was the sort of speech that pleased Nobby. He grunted his approval. He was the sort of man—steady, strong, and fearless—who was ready to carry out any sort of desperate enterprise; but to think one out, to make plans, that was entirely beyond the genial, hard-fighting Nobby.
"You get in at it, Bill," for, like his comrades, he had a great appreciation of that young fellow's shrewdness. "How 'ud you do it?"
It was Bill's turn to shrug his shoulders. "Do it?" he asked. "Ah! But chaps have jumped from a train before now—eh? What's to prevent us?"
"Them doors!" declared Nobby, pointing to the iron-bound doors which had been bolted on them.