"What's the game to be?" asked Roger.
"We'll leap on the raft as it floats past. If the Germans will let us share it with them, well and good. If not—well, we'll just have to fight them, that's all. As I said, it's our lives or theirs."
"If they haven't any arms we stand a chance," returned Roger. "But if they try any shooting——"
"I don't believe they have a gun or a revolver," interrupted Jimmy. "If they had, they'd have begun shooting before this. Come on now, get ready!"
The attitude of the Germans on the raft, at least those who by their attitude showed themselves to be unwounded, or at best but slightly wounded, was strange. They seemed stunned, as if they had passed through some terrible experience. And, as Roger and Jimmy learned later, the men had taken part in a desperate engagement, and their whole command had been practically wiped out. These few had managed to escape to the raft, but the horror of what they had gone through seemed to make them temporarily incapable of using all their faculties.
It was due to this, perhaps, that Roger and Jimmy were able to accomplish what they did. For as they leaped aboard the raft, there was only slight resistance at first. One or two of the Germans tried to push the lads off, and they would have succeeded had they used their strength to its best advantage.
But they did not seem to know what to do. As a matter of fact they lacked a leader, and a quick glance directed to the prostrate figures on the raft showed that one was an under officer. But he seemed to be dying.
And so, leaping from their rock, the two Americans landed on the raft. One German tried to push Jimmy off, but was sent staggering back with a blow in the face, and he fell over one of the prostrate figures. Then Roger overcame the man who rushed at him, and for the time being the Khaki Boys were victorious.
But the situation was almost changed for the worse a moment later. The under-officer, corresponding probably to an American second lieutenant, raised his head from a pool of blood and cried, in German, of course:
"Throw off the American pigs!"