"Give me your wrist," said Tom, reaching for it; "I won't hurt it any more than I have to; here—here's a good scheme."
He carefully stuffed his handkerchief around under the metal band which encircled the soldier's wrist and having thus formed a cushion to receive the pressure and protect the raw flesh, he closed his switch again and gently subjected the manacle to the revolving wheel, holding it upon the edge of the concave tire bed.
If the emery cloth had extended all the way around the wheel he could have taken the manacle off in less time than it had taken Kaiser Bill to lock it on, for the contrivance rivalled a buzzsaw. As it was, he had to stop every minute or two to rearrange the worn emery cloth and bind it in place anew. But for all that he succeeded in less than fifteen minutes in working a furrow almost through the metal band so that a little careful manipulating and squeezing and pressing of it enabled him to break it and force it open.
"There you are," he said, removing the handkerchief so as to get a better look at the cruel sore beneath; "didn't hurt much, did it? That's what Uncle Sam's trying to do for all the rest of you fellers—only you haven't got sense enough to know it."
CHAPTER THREE
THE OLD COMPASS
Tom took the limping Boche, his first war prisoner, to the Red Cross station at Vivieres where they had knives and scissors and bandages and antiseptics, but nothing with which to remove Prussian manacles, and all the king's horses and all the king's men and the willing, kindly nurses there could have done little for the poor Boche if Tom Slade, alias Thatchy, had not administered his own particular kind of first aid.
The French doctors sent him forth with unstinted praise which he only half understood, and as he sped along the road for Compiegne he wondered who could have been the allied gunner who at long range had cut Fritzie loose from the piece of artillery to which he had been chained.