“You know we didn’t mean any harm,” he said. “All that stuff the frogs put out about our trying to wreck the train was a dish of prunes. As if it wasn’t bad enough to miss the truck and walk out here twelve miles from town without having all this on top of it. When the quarantine for the itch was taken off, and Fat and I got those “thirty-six hours on condition you don’t go to Paris” passes, we got by the M. P.’s at the gare in Paris all right.
“We went out through the baggage-room. I wasn’t in the Ambulance for nothing. We came back into the station the same way, and once we got on the train we went right to sleep. They sure do put up a good champagne cocktail at Henry’s, and then all those beers at the Follies!
“Well, when I woke up we were at a station. I looked out and the sign on it said Chateauroux. I knew where we were all right because I’ve flown over the place. We’d passed Issy. So I woke Fat up and pulled him off the train. There was another train standing in the station, and I asked a frog where it went to and he said it was the Paris Express. So I knew it would take us back to Issy again, and we hopped on.
“We got into a third class compartment with a lot of poilus, and they had beaucoup red wine, and we drank to la belle France, and les-Êtats-Unis, and when I woke up again the train was just leaving a station, and the sign said Issy-la-Boue. By the time I realized what it all meant we were going too fast to jump off, so I pulled that handle on the wall, and the train stopped.
“When we saw how wrought up the frogs were, we beat it. No wonder we had to come over and help them win the war, if they’re all as bum shots as those birds were! Guess they thought we were bandits or spies or something. Well, we had to walk home to keep from being A. W. O. Loose from roll-call this morning, and never got home till four o’clock. Suppose after flying, I’ll have to go over and ’fess up to Herman, or you birds will never get any more passes. But I know I’ll never get one if I stay here for the duration of the war.”
“No pass ain’t nothin’ to what you’ll get, boy!” said “Long John.” “Shot at sunrise, is my bet. But I admire your self-sacrificin’ spirit.”
“Never mind, we’ll take our medicine, won’t we, Fat? And if I don’t mention you, maybe he won’t say anything about it.”
Fat grunted dolefully. Outside a bugle blew. The three rose to go.
“It’s me and Tommy to fly the eighteen meters,” said Long John. “Where do you go, Fat?”
“Machine-gun,” was the answer.