Now that the German spy had escaped again, he would surely turn up somewhere else and do more harm. Like his bearded confederate at Lofton, he could probably speak English and American English perfectly, and no doubt he knew French also, for these spies were of that sort—sharp-witted, brainy, learned scoundrels!
“He will try, yes, no doubt, but it will amount to very little. What can he do?” replied the sentinel to whom Don made his pessimistic remark.
“Are yez on to this?” said Tim Casey. “The Limburgers are a very smart bunch, yis; in many ways, yiz; but, me b’y, they’re awful stupid, do yez see? These here Huns are loike parrots. They’re windy imitators, ye see, but bad ’cess to thim, they got no real sense. They don’t know just phw’at they want. A parrot, me b’y, is always hollerin’ fer a cracker, but did yez iver see it eat wan? Ye did not.”
“By which you mean to say—” began Don.
“Thot the dumb Dutch will do somethin’ crazy sooner er later an’ hang hisself. They jist natchally go round with a rope ready. An look phw’at they’re doin’ in this war. Preparin’ the thickest koind of a rope an’ makin’ it good an’ tight around their fool necks be desthroyin’ iv’rything they come acrost so that whin they have t’ pay they can’t do it!”
It might seem to one not familiar with the risks of battle that the work of an army or Red Cross ambulance driver must have been intolerably monotonous. But such an idea is very far from the truth. No two journeys afield were alike and so varied was the work and so soul-stirring the sights and sounds of two great armies facing each other, with bared fangs, that the part of any kind of an actor in the war become a terribly real experience.
There was no monotony in this thing for Don Richards, nor doubtless, for any other ambulance driver in France during the great war, and our hero could affirm this, especially when a shell, making a direct hit, carried away all the latter part of his ambulance and burst on the ground beyond, not forty feet away. Tim and Don were dragged one way by the impact, a hundredth of a second later tossed, in a heap in the other direction clear of motor and front wheels, upon a friendly bit of mud and left to wonder whether the world had come to an end completely, or was only just beginning to. And yet the boys came through without a scratch worth mentioning.
Tim Casey worried Don not a little in always being slow with his gas mask. The boy told his helper that it would serve him right some time if he got a sore throat from the gas. But the Irishman laughed; he was really not afraid of anything normal, and abnormal things he treated with a sort of lenient bluff, cursing them soundly in his soft Irish brogue and dodging them because it was the habit to do so.
“The sthinkin’ stuff is as vile as the dirthy Huns thot sind it over, an’ if Oi had the villain thot invinted it Oi’d maul the face off him, I wud!”
“But suppose he were a big fellow, like some of these Huns are?” Don asked in jest, to tease his companion.