"Do you see?" he said, "we floated over on this piece of land. The tree where we hung our coats was on the _real_ sh.o.r.e, and----"
"Go-od night, and it missed the boat," concluded Archer.
"This tree here is something like it," said Tom, "and that"s where I made my mistake. I ought to have noticed the trees and I ought to have noticed the crack. Gee, if my scout patrol ever heard of that!
"Specially Roy Blakeley," he added, shaking his head dubiously.
It was indeed something of a "bull" in scouting, though perhaps a more experienced forester than Tom would have become as confused as he in the same circ.u.mstances. Perhaps if he had been as companionable with his school geography as Archer had been with his he might have known about the famous Lake Nonnenmattweiher in the silent depths of the Schwarzwald and of its world-famed floating island, which makes its nocturnal cruises from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, a silent, restless voyager on that black pine-embowered lake.
As the boys looked back across the water they could see the little Swiss toymaker still standing upon the sh.o.r.e, and looking at him through the rescued gla.s.s (of which they were soon to make better use), Tom could see that his odd little figure was shaking with merriment--as if he were wound up.
CHAPTER XXVIII
AN INVESTMENT
Often, in the grim, b.l.o.o.d.y days to come, they thought of the little Swiss toymaker up there among his windmills and Noah"s arks, and of his laugh at their expense. A merry little gnome he was, the very spirit of the Black Forest.
Their last sight of him marked almost the end of their wanderings. For another day"s tramping through the solemn depths brought them to a little community, a tiny forest village, made up of just such cottages and people, and they made a detour to avoid it, only to run plunk into another miniature industrial centre which they also "side-stepped,"
though indeed the iron fist seemed not to be very tightly closed upon these primitive knights of the jack-knife and chisel; and they saw no dreaded sign of authority.
Still they did not wish to be reckless and when they sought food and shelter it was at a sequestered cottage several miles from the nearest habitation. Here Tom showed his b.u.t.ton but the old man (they saw no young men) seemed not to know what it meant, although he gave them food, apparently believing them to be German soldiers.
Tom believed that they must have journeyed fifty or sixty miles southward, verging away from the river so as to keep within the depths of the forest, and he realized that the time had come for them to consider just what course they were going to pursue.
"If we"re going to try to find her," he said rather hesitatingly, "we ought to hit it west so"s we can take a pike across the river. But if we keep straight south we"ll strike the river after it bends, if that old weaver knew what he was talking about, and when we cross it we"ll be in Switzerland. We"ll do whatever you say. Going straight south would be easier and safer," he added, with his usual blunt honesty; "and if we cross back into Alsace we"ll have to go past houses and people and we"ll be taking chances.--I admit it"s like things in a book--I mean rescuing girls," he said, with his characteristic awkward frankness, "and maybe some people would say it was crazy, kind of----" What he meant was _romantic_, but he didn"t exactly know how to say that. "As long as we"ve been lucky so far maybe we ought to get across the frontier and over to France as quick as we can. I s"pose that"s where we belong--most of all----"
"Is that what you think?" said Archer.
"I ain"t sayin" what I think, but----"
"Well, then, I"ll say what _I_ think," retorted Archer. "You"re always telling about thoughts you"ve had. I don"t claim I"m as good as you arre at having thoughts, but if therre"s a soldierr wounded they send two or three soldierrs to carry the stretcherr, don"t they? Maybe those soldierrs ought to be fighting, but saving a person comes firrst. You"ve hearrd about giving all you have to the Red Cross. All _we_ got is the _chance_ to get away. We"ve got morre chance than we had when we starrted, "cause you"rre a good scout----"
"I don"t claim----"
"Shut up," said Archer; "so it"s like saving up ourr chances and adding to "em, till now we"re "most in Switzerland and we got a good big chance saved up. I"ll tell you what I"m going to do with mine--I"m going to give it to the Red Cross--_kind of_--as you"d say. If that girrl is worrkin" on that road and I can find herr, I"m goin" to. If I get pinched, all right. So it ain"t a question of what _we"rre_ goin" to do; it"s a question of: Are _you_ with me? You"re always tellin" when yourr thoughts come to you. Well, I got that one just before I dived for the gla.s.s. So that"s the way I"m going to invest _my_ chance, "cause I haven"t got anything else to give.... I heard in prison about the Liberty Bond b.u.t.tons they give you to wearr back home. I"d like to have one of those blamed things to wearr for a souveneerr."
Tom Slade had stood silent throughout this harangue, and now he laughed a little awkwardly. "It"s better than investing money," he said, "and what I"m laughing at--kind of," he added with infinite relief and satisfaction showing through the emotion he was trying to repress; "what I"m laughing at is how you"re always thinking about souvenirs."
So it was decided that their little joint store, their savings, as one might say--their standing capital of _chance_ which they had improved and added to--should be invested in the hazardous business of rescuing a daughter of France from her German captors. It was _giving_ with a vengeance.
It is a pity that there was no b.u.t.ton to signalize this kind of a contribution.
CHAPTER XXIX
CAMOUFLAGE
They turned westward now in a direction which Tom thought would bring them about opposite the Alsatian town of Norne. A day"s journey took them out of the forest proper into a rocky region of spa.r.s.e vegetation from which they could see the river winding ribbonlike in the distance.
Beyond it in the flat Alsatian country lay a considerable city which, from what old Melotte had told them, they believed to be Mulhausen.
"Norne is a little to the south of that and closer to the river," said Tom.
They picked their way along the edge of the palisades, concealing themselves among the rocks, and as they thus worked to the southward the precipitous heights and the river converged until they were almost directly above the water. At last, looking down, they saw upon the narrow strip of sh.o.r.e directly below them the old castle of which Melotte had told them. There was no other in sight. From their dizzy perch among the concealing rocks they could see almost the whole width of southern Alsace in panorama, as one sees New York from the Palisades of the Hudson, and in the distance the dim outlines of the Vosges mountains, beyond which lay France.
Not far from the river on the Alsatian side and (as old Melotte had said) directly opposite the castle, was a small town which Tom studied carefully with the gla.s.s.
"That"s it," he said, relieved, for both of them had harbored a lingering fear that these places existed only in the childish mind of the blue-eyed old weaver. "Melotte was right," he added. "Wait a minute--I"ll let you look. You can see the new road and people working on it and--wait a minute--I can see a little flag on one house."
There was no doubt about it. There was the town of Norne, and just west of it a road with tiny figures distributed along it.
Archer was all a-quiver as he took the gla.s.s. "I can see the house," he said; "it"s right near the road, it"s got a flag on it. When the light strikes it you can see the black spot. Oh, look, look!"
"I can"t look when you"ve got the gla.s.s," said Tom in his dull way.
"I can see the battleline!" cried Archer.
Tom took the gla.s.s with unusual excitement. Far across the Alsatian country, north and south, ran a dim, gray line, seeming to have no more substance than a rainbow or the dust in a sun-ray. Far to the north it bent westward and he knew its course lay through the mountains. But short of those blue heights it seemed to peter out in a sort of gray mist. And that was all that could be seen of that seething, b.l.o.o.d.y line where the destinies of mankind were being contended for.
It was easy for the boys to imagine that the specks they could see were soldiers, American soldiers perhaps, and that low-hung clouds were the smoke of thundering artillery....
"I wonder if we"ll ever get over there," said Archer.
"Over there," Tom repeated abstractedly.
Their program now must be one of stealth, not boldness, and they did not wish to be seen scrambling down the heights in broad daylight; so they waited for the night, regaling themselves out of the "furious profusion"
of grapes of which there seemed enough to make an ocean of Rhenish wine.
It was dark when they reached the river bank and explored the sh.o.r.e for some means of getting across. At last they discovered a float with several boats attached to it and a ramshackle structure hard by within which was a light and the familiar sound of a baby crying.
"We"ve got to make up our minds not to be scared," said Tom, "and we mustn"t _look_ as if we were scared. You can"t make believe you"re not scared if you are. Let"s try to make ourselves think we"re really German soldiers and then other people will think so. We"ve got to act just like "em."
"If you mean we"ve got to murrderr that baby," said Archer; "no sirree!
Not for mine!"
"That _ain"t_ what I mean," said Tom. "You know Jeb Rushmore at Temple Camp? He came from Arizona. He says you can always tell a fake cowboy no matter how he may be dressed up because he don"t _feel_ like the West.
It ain"t just the uniforms that do it; it"s the way we _act_."
"I get you," said Archer.