"Three husky doughboys of the American Army put to flight by a horde of rats!" he exclaimed.
"All the same, they'd be picking the bones of those same husky doughboys if we hadn't vamoosed," defended Billy. "Gee! it seemed to me that there must have been millions of them."
"I know now how that Bishop Hatto, or whoever it was, felt when the rats were after him," put in Bart. "If we'd only had some clubs with us we might have had a chance."
"Well, they made us show our backs, and that's something the Huns were never able to do," said Frank. "But I guess we'd better get back to the barracks and cauterize these bites. I don't know how you fellows made out, but I'll bet they bit me in twenty places. I'm bleeding fiercely."
"Same here," echoed Billy.
"I feel as though I were one big wound," said Bart lugubriously. "But say, fellows, don't let on what we've been up against or the boys will guy us to death."
"And to think we've been to all this trouble only to find that we'd stumbled into a sewer," said Frank disgustedly. "That's what it must have been, guessing by the smell."
"Oh by the way!" exclaimed Billy, as a thought struck him. "I meant to tell you fellows, but the fight with the rats put it out of my mind. There was an electric light in one of those passages."
Frank, who had gotten to his feet and started to walk away, stopped as though he had been shot.
"What's that?" he demanded sharply.