"Got 'em!" cried Jack, enthusiastically, at that moment, and began at once to send his important news.
"I want to get permission now to go on and tell General Bean what we've learned," he explained to Tom as he still waited after sending his message. "Then, as soon as I get it, I'll splice this wire and fix it so that the line will be open for regular service again. We don't want to interrupt traffic by telegraph or telephone, if we can help it. But this won't make much difference at this hour of the night. I don't believe that many messages are sent over this wire after midnight as a rule."
They had to wait twenty minutes for the reply, but when it came Jack was told to use his own best judgment, and that General Harkness would rely upon him to get the highly important information he had sent to headquarters to General Bean.
"I thought we'd be allowed to do that," said Jack, after he had put the wire in order again. In the car there was plenty of telegraph wire for repairing lines cut by the enemy, so the task was not at all a difficult one.
"Gee, Jack," said Tom, "I've certainly learned one thing lately, and that is that there's nothing you know that isn't likely to come in handy sometime or another. I didn't know you knew as much as this about telegraphy."
"I've always been interested in it, Tom. It's so fascinating. You can use all sorts of knowledge if you're in the army, too. Think of the engineers. They have to be able to build bridges, and destroy them, and erect fortifications without the proper materials. Not in this war, of course, but if there was real fighting. These maneuvers are different from the ordinary sort. They're not so cut and dried, and there aren't so many rules. I've read about maneuvers when there were rules to govern every sort of situation that came up—in fact, surprising situations couldn't come up, because everything that was to happen had been worked out ahead of time."
"This is better for us, isn't it, Jack? I mean, we're really learning how a war would actually be fought."
"We're getting a pretty good idea of it, anyhow. It isn't a bit the way I thought it was going to be."
"Well, we ought to be getting in touch with General Bean pretty soon, I should think."
"We've got another ten or twelve miles to drive yet. I took a pretty wide swing around, thinking we'd avoid the enemy altogether. Instead of that, we bumped right into them. It's surely a good thing we had that little engine trouble. We'd be prisoners right now if we'd been able to go on at full speed, because I don't believe we'd have been able to see them in time to turn around and get away. And we got a much better chance to see what they were up to, too."