"Not if you insult my country. Oh, Herr Von Lutzow, do get up a hockey game. It would be such fun to see you try and play."
"You think we could not? Too stiff—what? Rahden, we will have to show them that the German army cannot be trifled with even in sport. Then, Young America, get up your company, team, what you call it, and we will meet you on the battle-ground of the Grunewald one week from to-day. Ah! It will be the birthday of your great man, is it not? Your Mr. Washington."
Dick and Charlie were old friends by the time they left the Eisbahn, and they walked home together, discussing most earnestly the vital question of "material" for their hockey team.
"A week is an awfully short time," Dick said, as they parted; "but if the ice lasts we will show them what American boys can do."
The next day, however, brought a most discouraging note to Charlie.
"I can't find a fellow who knows a hockey from a hole in the ground," Dick wrote. "It's awfully hard luck. I could get Englishmen to burn; but that wouldn't do, because we challenged the officers to an international game, and we've got to stick to it, and play them somehow."
Charlie's spirits sank to zero. He didn't know a single boy in the whole city, and, what was even worse, he could not go out that afternoon to help in the search. But surely in all Berlin there must be at least seven boys—for they needn't play eleven—who knew something of shinny, or even football—if they could only skate. So he wrote back to Dick in the words of the famous Lawrence, and then waited in a fever of impatience for Dick's next bulletin.
"It's all right," Dick wrote. "I hustled like everything yesterday, and managed to find some fellows who knew how to handle their hockeys pretty well, but have never played on a regular team. They'll do, though. I hope the officers won't crawl now."
So did Charlie, devoutly, for his spirits had risen so high with the first sentence that he felt ready for any thing—artillery, cavalry, infantry—let them all come on!
That afternoon the raw recruits were drilled with such energy by the "little corporals," as the officers had dubbed the boys, that it began to look dark for the German army.