Before leaving camp, Hugh had secured a piece of white muslin and tied this to a stick three or four feet long. His idea was that a flag of truce, being understood by people of every nation, is as a rule respected. If the strikers seemed disposed to be ugly toward the scouts and threatened an attack, perhaps the waving of this flag might hold them in check.
All Hugh wanted was a fair chance to explain the motive that was bringing himself and comrades into the fighting zone. Surely after the men and women learned that they only came with the intention of caring for those poor unfortunates who may have been shot down by the guards at the works, they could not continue to bear the boys any animosity.
He knew that the sight of their uniforms was apt to be the worst feature of the case, for this would prejudice the ignorant foreigners against them. The situation was fraught with considerable risk, and Hugh realized that it would require all the diplomacy he could display in order that they might avoid a rupture with the sullen men and the furious women among the foreigners.
“Listen! wasn’t that someone talking in an outlandish jabber?” asked Bud, all of a sudden, holding up his hand.
“Yes, we must be getting close to their settlement,” announced Hugh, as his jaw became more firmly set, and his eyes took on a determined expression.
“I think we’ll open it up as soon as we pass around that clump of trees on the side of the road, Hugh,” Ralph Kenyon was heard to remark.
“The road takes a sharp bend there,” said Hugh, “and I’ve no doubt we’ll find the camp not far away. It may be we can see the cement works at the same time, for there isn’t more than a quarter of a mile between them, I understand.”
They kept on running, and in less than two minutes more turned the bend in the road. As they did so Bud Morgan called out:
“There are the shacks now, fellows!”
“Gee! what a tumble-down place!” exclaimed Billy.