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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Army Boys in France, by Homer Randall
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Army Boys in France
+       or, From Training Camp to Trenches
+
+Author: Homer Randall
+
+Release Date: June 13, 2011 [EBook #36424]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARMY BOYS IN FRANCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "'Tis the bist uv exercise, throwin' thim things is."
+Page 133]
+
+
+
+
+Army Boys in France
+
+OR
+
+From Training Camp to Trenches
+
+
+BY
+
+HOMER RANDALL
+
+_Author of "Army Boys in the French Trenches" and "Army Boys on the
+Firing Line"_
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD SYNDICATE PUBLISHING CO.
+
+CLEVELAND, O. ------ NEW YORK, N. Y.
+
+
+Made in U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
+
+GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+PRESS OF
+
+THE COMMERCIAL BOOKBINDING CO.
+
+CLEVELAND
+
+Made in U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+ARMY BOYS IN FRANCE
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     I--The Bugle Calls
+    II--A Remorseless Enemy
+   III--The Gathering Storm
+    IV--War
+     V--A Vandal Punished
+    VI--The Die Is Cast
+   VII--For Love of Country
+  VIII--Off to Camp
+    IX--A New Life
+     X--Instruments of Death
+    XI--Nick Rabig Turns Up
+   XII--For France
+  XIII--The Lurking Peril
+   XIV--The War-Swept Land
+    XV--Within the Sound of Guns
+   XVI--The Airship Raid
+  XVII--The Baptism of Fire
+ XVIII--A Grim Reality
+   XIX--Nick Rabig Under Arrest
+    XX--A Rattling Bout
+   XXI--Paying a Debt
+  XXII--A Promise of Help
+ XXIII--Facing the Hun
+  XXIV--In No Man's Land
+   XXV--A Gallant Exploit
+
+
+
+
+ARMY BOYS IN FRANCE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE BUGLE CALLS
+
+"Looks like war, fellows!" exclaimed Frank Sheldon, as, on a cold March
+morning he came briskly into the business house where he was employed,
+and slipped off his overcoat.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," responded Bart Raymond, Frank's special chum.
+"It's looked like war ever since the _Lusitania_ was sunk, but we
+haven't got our fighting clothes on yet.  The American eagle keeps on
+cooing like a dove."
+
+"He's waking up now though," asserted Frank confidently, "and pretty
+soon he'll begin to scream.  And when he does there'll be trouble for
+the Kaiser."
+
+"He isn't worrying much about us," put in Tom Bradford.  "He figures
+that his U-boats will do the trick long before we get ready to fight.
+Sometimes I think he's pretty nearly right too.  They're sinking ships
+right and left.  They got three of them yesterday, and one was a liner
+of more than ten thousand tons."
+
+"That's bad," agreed Frank.  "But the worst thing about it is that one
+of the three was an American ship.  As long as they sank only French
+and English vessels, it might be said that it was none of our business,
+although it has always seemed to me a cruel and cowardly way of
+fighting.  But when they get after Uncle Sam's boats it's time for us
+to get busy."
+
+"Johnny get your gun! get your gun!" chanted "Reddy," the irrepressible
+office boy.
+
+"What's the use of talking," said Bart disgustedly.  "They'll cook up
+some excuse about not knowing that it was an American ship, and we'll
+swallow the excuse and pretend to believe it.  One lie more or less is
+nothing to a nation that calls a treaty a scrap of paper."
+
+"It wasn't that way in the old days," remarked old Peterson, the head
+bookkeeper, who had been at the "Bloody Angle" when Pickett led the
+charge at Gettysburg.  "Men were men then and ready to fight at the
+drop of a hat.  Americans didn't need a swift kick then to get them
+into action."
+
+He shook his gray head mournfully at the thought of the evil days on
+which his country had fallen.
+
+"Don't you worry, Mr. Peterson," replied Frank confidently.  "America
+is just as sound at heart as ever she was.  Just let the bugle call and
+a million men will answer.  We'll raise an army in less than no time."
+
+"Well, perhaps so," admitted Peterson half grudgingly.  "But even if we
+did they'd be raw troops and stand no chance against trained soldiers.
+They'd only be food for cannon.  It takes at least a year to make a
+soldier.  And before we could get on the firing line the Germans might
+have France and England licked to a frazzle."
+
+"Not much chance of that," put in Tom.  "It's more likely to be the
+other way.  What's Hindenburg doing now but retreating?"
+
+"But it's a long, long way before he'll get back to the Rhine," replied
+Peterson.  "And in the meantime it looks as if Russia was getting ready
+to quit.  I tell you, boys, if we get into it, the work of winning the
+war will be on our shoulders.  And it won't be a cinch any way you look
+at it."
+
+"Not a cinch perhaps," agreed Frank thoughtfully, "but I wouldn't have
+any doubt about how it would come out in the long run.  I'd back
+America to whip the world."
+
+"So would I," came back Peterson promptly, "if it were just a question
+of man against man.  But this is a war of machinery.  The day's gone by
+when a man could grab a musket and run out to meet the other fellow
+who, as a rule, wasn't any better prepared than he was.  Now it's a
+matter of cannon, and machine guns, and liquid fire, and poison gases,
+and all the rest of it.  The Germans have those things and know how to
+use them.  We haven't got them and wouldn't know how to use them if we
+had.  Why, a single German army corps has more machine guns than we
+have in the whole United States!"
+
+"Of course we're not prepared," broke in Hal Chase.  "But we've got
+plenty of company in that.  Who in the world was prepared except
+Germany?  She caught all Europe asleep.  If three years ago anyone had
+said this war was coming we'd have thought him crazy."
+
+"Yes," agreed Tom.  "That's true enough and you can't blame the rest of
+the world too much.  But there's no excuse for us being caught this
+way.  We've watched this thing developing for the last two years and
+coming closer and closer to us all the time.  It was a dead sure thing
+that sooner or later we would get in it.  And yet we've been like a man
+who sees the house next door burning and doesn't take any steps to
+protect his own."
+
+"Well," said Frank, "what's past is past and there's no use crying over
+spilled milk.  There's no use either in asking who has been to blame.
+That can be settled after the war.  What we Americans have got to do is
+to buck up, stand shoulder to shoulder, and fight as Americans always
+have fought when they've got into a scrap."
+
+"Sure thing," agreed Bart.  "But just now it would be like a man
+fighting with his bare fists against another fellow that's got a gun.
+He might be brave enough, but the other fellow's bullet would get to
+him before his fist could land."
+
+"It isn't the first time we've been in this fix," said Tom.  "But
+somehow or other we've always managed to come through on top.  See how
+it was in 1812.  We didn't have any navy and England had the greatest
+fleet in the world.  But we built the ships and made the guns, and
+knocked spots out of the other fellows."
+
+"Yes," said Hal, "and Perry won the battle of Lake Erie with ships made
+from trees that a hundred days before had had birds' nests in them.
+And what we did once we can do again."
+
+"You've said it!" broke in Reddy, who, although too young to be a
+soldier, was chock full of patriotism.
+
+"Oh, well," said old Peterson.  "We're not in the war yet and perhaps
+we never shall be.  But there will be war sure enough if the boss comes
+in and finds you fellows chinning when you ought to be working.  So get
+busy."
+
+"How about Peterson himself?" said Bart to Frank in a lowered tone as
+they scattered for their tasks.  "I notice the old chap himself isn't
+slow when it comes to a talk fest."
+
+The firm of Moore and Thomas, by which the young men were employed, did
+a thriving hardware business in the prosperous town of Camport, an
+inland city of about twenty-five thousand people.  The work was
+wholesale and extended all over the country.  They carried on also
+quite an export trade, and just now because of the war feeling that was
+in the air they were busier than usual.  So that for the rest of the
+morning the boys kept close to their work, and conversation was limited
+strictly to business.
+
+But the thought that was in all their minds could not be long
+suppressed, and the discussion broke out afresh when twelve o'clock
+struck and they knocked off work preparatory to going to lunch.
+
+"I don't think we'll wear these duds much longer," remarked Bart as he
+put on his coat.  "I'll bet most of this bunch will be in khaki before
+three months are over."
+
+"I know one that will anyway," replied Frank.  "Just let the President
+call for troops and I'll come running."
+
+"Oh, you fellows make me tired!" broke in a rough voice behind them.
+"All the running you'll do will be to run away when you get sight of a
+German uniform."
+
+They wheeled around and saw that the speaker was Nick Rabig, the
+foreman of the shipping department.
+
+He was a big burly fellow with a mottled face, thick neck and small
+eyes that seldom had in them anything but a surly expression.  He was
+the bully of the place, and was universally disliked.
+
+"Who asked you to butt in?" demanded Bart, nettled at the interruption.
+
+"This is a free country, ain't it?" replied Rabig, truculently.
+
+"Sure it is," said Bart.  "That's the reason your father came here from
+Germany, wasn't it?"
+
+The shot went home, for Rabig, though born in this country, was of
+German descent and for the last two years had been vehement in his
+denunciation of the Allies and fervent in his praise of the Teutons.
+
+"Germany's all right," he retorted, "and don't you forget it!"
+
+"If Germany's all right, it's surprising how many Germans try to get
+away from it," remarked Frank dryly.  "You don't notice many Americans
+going over to Germany."
+
+"That's just because Germany is crowded," defended Rabig.  "But just
+the same it's a better country than America ever dared to be.  And when
+she gets through this war she'll be twice as big as she was before and
+there'll be plenty of room for all her people."
+
+"Going to gobble up all Europe, is she?" asked Frank, sarcastically.
+
+"Then I suppose she'll come over and take in America, too, so as to
+make a good job of it," said Bart, with a grin of derision.
+
+"Why not?" responded Rabig, promptly.  "Somebody has got to rule the
+world, and why not Germany?"
+
+Quite a group had gathered about them by this time, and there was a
+roar of laughter at this frank expression of the German spirit and the
+German purpose.
+
+Rabig grew red with fury.  His little eyes glowered as he glared about
+him.
+
+"We'll hang the Kaiser on a sour apple tree!" chanted Reddy.
+
+Rabig aimed a blow at him which Reddy adroitly ducked, and Frank
+stepped between them.
+
+"Leave the boy alone, Rabig," he demanded, and Rabig's fury turned on
+Frank.
+
+"What have you got to say about it?" he snarled.  "Do you want to
+fight?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A REMORSELESS ENEMY
+
+There was a murmur of excited expectation and the crowd gathered closer.
+
+For a full minute Frank's eyes looked full into Rabig's.  And in the
+silent duel Rabig's eyes were the first to waver.  Then Frank spoke.
+
+"No," he said, quietly.  "Brawling isn't in my line.  I won't
+fight--not here or now."
+
+There was a sigh of disappointment from the onlookers who had been
+keyed up in delighted anticipation, and Rabig, though his eyes had
+fallen before the glint in Frank's, resumed his swaggering air.
+
+"Afraid to fight, eh?" he sneered.
+
+Before a reply could be made, Mr. Thomas, the junior member of the
+firm, came out from his private office and the gathering dispersed.
+
+"Why didn't you trim him, Frank?" asked Bart curiously, as they walked
+down the street together.  "I wanted to see you wipe up the ground with
+him.  You could have done it too.  You've got as much muscle as he has
+and ten times the grit.  I fairly ached to see you sail into him."
+
+"Well," said Frank, thoughtfully, "there were two reasons.  In the
+first place, I didn't care to soil my hands with the fellow and put
+myself on his level.  Then again, you know how sensitive my mother is,
+and she'd have hated to see me get mixed up in a shop brawl.  But Rabig
+has his coming to him, and he'll get it sooner or later."
+
+"Sooner, I hope," returned Bart.  "If you don't, I'll do it myself.
+That "_Deutschland Uber Alles_" stuff of his is getting on my nerves.
+Just now it's the ambition of my life to lick a Hun."
+
+"You may have the chance sooner than you think," laughed Frank.
+"Germany's just about got to the end of her rope with us.  Let her sink
+just one more ship and she'll find out what she's up against."
+
+"It can't come too soon for me," responded Bart, and as just then they
+reached the junction of the streets where their ways parted Bart went
+on and Frank turned into the quiet street on which his home was located.
+
+It was a modest little structure, set some distance back from the
+street, surrounded by flowers and shrubbery which in summer were a riot
+of color and perfume.
+
+Before his hand touched the door knob, his mother, who had been
+watching for his coming, swung the door wide open and stood ready to
+give him a loving greeting.
+
+Frank's eyes brightened as they dwelt upon her.  She was a pretty
+little woman with a piquancy of expression, a brightness of eye and an
+alertness of carriage that at first glance betrayed her French origin.
+Her pretty color and a certain appealing helplessness in her manner
+toward her son had always made her seem to Frank more like a charming
+sister than a mother.
+
+And now as he put his arm protectingly about her and stooped to kiss
+her he was alarmed at the traces of recent tears which she had not been
+able entirely to obliterate.
+
+"Mother!" he cried, holding her away from him and searching her face
+anxiously.  "You've been crying!  You just tell me who's made you, and
+I'll--" he doubled up his fist in a threatening gesture; but with a
+little laugh his mother inserted her own small fingers within his and
+led him into the dining-room.
+
+"Look!" she cried, pointing to a great steaming tureen of soup that
+stood in the center of the table.  "You said last night you were hungry
+for soup, and so I made it especially for you, dear, to surprise you.
+You must tell me how you like it before you ask any more questions.
+See, how steaming hot it is."
+
+"Say, and I stopped to argue when this was waiting for me!" cried
+Frank, literally flinging himself upon the tempting dish.  "Run around
+to your side, Mother, and hold your plate.  Say, if this tastes as good
+as it smells--"
+
+Like two children they tasted the soup, then with expressions of
+contentment laughed into each other's eyes.  Then Frank launched into
+an account of the morning's events, for he was accustomed to discuss
+everything with his mother, who was his comrade in all things small or
+great.
+
+"My fingers itched to be at that bully," he said, "but I held myself
+in, and I guess you know one of the reasons."
+
+"Yes, dear," responded his mother, lovingly.  "You're always thinking
+of me.  I'm glad you didn't get into a fight.  I have always hated
+them.  A time may come," she added, a shadow crossing her face, "when
+you will be forced to fight, not for yourself, but for the honor of
+your dear country."
+
+"For two countries, maybe," said Frank with a smile.  "For every stroke
+that America deals to the Kaiser will help France as well."
+
+"Ah, _la belle_ France," said his mother with a sigh.  "How my heart
+bleeds for my beloved country!  I had a letter to-day from Cousin
+Lucie.  And, oh, she had such terrible news!"
+
+"Nothing has happened to her, I hope," said Frank, quickly.
+
+"No, not to her," replied his mother.  "One of those poor refugees from
+Belgium has got through the German lines and is staying at her house.
+This woman was at Dinant when the town was captured by the Germans in
+the early part of the war, and the stories she tells of what happened
+there are too dreadful for words.  And yet she saw those things
+herself, and Lucie tells me she is sure the woman is honest and tells
+the absolute truth."
+
+"I am ready to believe almost anything of German brutality," said
+Frank, bitterly.  "And I suppose for every awful thing that's told
+there are a hundred more that haven't come to light.  Tell me what
+Cousin Lucie said."
+
+"This Mrs. Pentlivre," replied his mother, "told Lucie that the Germans
+attacked the town early on an August morning.  They outnumbered the
+defenders, who were forced to retreat and take up new positions.  Then
+those Huns entered the town.
+
+"It was about half past six in the morning.  The cathedral was full of
+worshippers, as it was Sunday and services were being held.  The
+Germans burst into the church, drove out the people and separated the
+men from the women with the butts of their rifles.  Then the troops
+deliberately shot into the mass of unarmed men, killing twenty or more
+of them.  They made prisoners of the rest, and then went through street
+after street, setting all the houses on fire until the beautiful town
+was completely destroyed.
+
+"All day long they kept the wretched people prisoners, threatening and
+reviling them--you couldn't imagine the names they called them, so
+Cousin Lucie said--and after that they took all the people whom they
+had not already put to death to a garden wall at the end of the town.
+Then they took those poor men and even the little boys and stood them
+up against the wall.  Oh, Frank, what do you suppose those murderers
+did then?  Shot them down in cold blood, while their wives and mothers
+fell shrieking on their knees, begging passionately for mercy for their
+loved ones."
+
+"The brutes!" cried Frank, pushing back his chair and beginning to pace
+the room while his mother watched him with tears in her eyes.  "There's
+German Kultur for you!  And what they did there, they've done in fifty
+other places in Belgium and Northern France.  I tell you, Mother, the
+world won't be a fit place to live in until such things are punished as
+they ought to be."
+
+"I'm afraid not," sighed his mother.  "But such a task as it is going
+to be!"
+
+"America will do it!" cried Frank, confidently.  "It's up to her to
+tame the beasts.  France and England are holding them in check, but
+they won't be able to drive them back until Uncle Sam's army boys get
+over there."
+
+"But think of what it means if we get into the war," said his mother
+sadly.  "It's bad enough to read and hear about such terrible things,
+but what will it be when our own men are killed and wounded and blinded
+by the thousands.  Ah, I cannot bear to think of it!" and she looked at
+Frank with apprehension in her eyes.
+
+"Americans have always known how to die," said Frank, proudly.
+"They've shown that at Bunker Hill, at Monterey and Gettysburg and
+other battlefields.  And the man who doesn't know how to die, doesn't
+know how to live and isn't fit to live."
+
+"Spoken like my own brave boy," cried his mother.  "And yet my heart
+stands still when I think of you in those awful trenches.  You are all
+I have, Frank!" and tears welled again to her eyes.
+
+"I know, little Mother," said Frank, coming around to her chair and
+patting her cheek fondly.  "But you wouldn't want your son to be a
+slacker, would you?  How could I look you in the face if I held back,
+while the sons of other mothers went forward to fight for their
+country."
+
+"You're right, dear, of course," said his mother.  "And hard as it
+would be, I'd let you go if your country needed you.  But, oh, the days
+and nights of waiting while you were gone!  I would not have one happy
+moment, one care-free hour."
+
+"Yours would be the harder part, Mother," said the son gently.  "I'd
+have at least the excitement and fury of the fight, while you would be
+eating out your heart here--alone.  But cheer up," he continued in a
+lighter tone, "it hasn't come to that yet, and perhaps it never will.
+A hundred things may happen.  Russia may come up to the scratch again.
+Hindenburg has already begun to retreat, Germany may cave in at any
+time.  Austria may make a separate peace.  The Germans may call off
+their U-boat campaign rather than bring the United States into the war.
+We'll hope for the best while we're getting ready for the worst.  At
+any rate, we won't grizzle about it till we have to--will we, Mother?"
+this last in a coaxing tone that brought a swift response from his
+mother, whose French vivacity and sparkle returned in a measure.
+
+"No, we won't, dear," she answered, smilingly brushing away the tears.
+"We're going to be just as happy and bright as ever and await with
+courage whatever the future may bring to us.  But, dear boy, look at
+that clock!  You'll be late if you don't hurry.  Hurry, now, I must not
+be the one to blame."
+
+She kissed him good-bye with a smile on her lips and waved to him
+merrily from the doorway.  But there was a world of foreboding in her
+mother eyes as she watched him swinging briskly down the street.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE GATHERING STORM
+
+Events moved on swiftly for the next few days.  History was being made
+at a more rapid rate than ever before.  War was in the air and
+everybody felt it.
+
+"Something's got to break mighty soon, Bart," remarked Frank, as he met
+his friend one morning.
+
+"Can't come too soon for me," said Bart.  "Ever since we broke off
+diplomatic relations I've known there could be but one end to it.
+That's never been done yet without a country finally going to war."
+
+"And it won't this time either," agreed Frank.  "The fact is, I'd be
+almost sorry if it did.  I'm getting so sore at the way the Germans are
+trying to ride rough shod over the world that I'm anxious to get a
+whack at them."
+
+"I, too," declared Bart.  "The cool way in which they offered part of
+the United States to Mexico has got me so riled that I can't think of
+anything else but getting even.  And you notice how, in spite of all
+warning, they keep on sinking American ships!  They figure that we're
+just bluffing.  Their newspapers keep telling them that we're only a
+nation of shopkeepers who think of nothing but the almighty dollar and
+that we're making so much money out of the war in selling munitions to
+the Allies we'll take good care not to get into it ourselves."
+
+"They're just about due to wake up out of their dream," said Frank,
+grimly.  "They make a big mistake when they think our patience is
+cowardice, or greed for money.  As a matter of fact, there isn't a
+nation in the world so unselfish as America.  Look at the way we went
+into the Spanish war--just pure humanity, to save Cuba from the horrors
+she was undergoing at the hands of that butcher, Weyler.  And see how
+quickly we gave Cuba her independence as soon as the war was over and
+she was ready for it.  There isn't another nation in the world that
+would have let such a rich prize slip through her fingers when once she
+had laid her hands on it."
+
+"Oh, well, the Germans are fed up on lies, anyway," responded Bart.
+"That's the only way the government can keep up the spirits of the
+people.  The newspapers say just what the Kaiser tells them to say.
+Some day the papers will tell them that the Americans have horns and
+hoofs, and they'll swallow it without winking."
+
+"They'll see for themselves what we are," said Frank, "when our boys go
+over the top and meet them face to face."
+
+"I just got a letter from Billy Waldon," went on Bart.  "He's been down
+on the Mexican border chasing Villa and his gang.  Says he's in fine
+shape and feeling like a two-year-old.  His regiment's been ordered
+back, and he'll be with us soon.  Says he's honing to get a crack at
+the Germans."
+
+"Billy's a fine fellow," said Frank heartily, "and the experience he's
+been getting in Mexico ought to help him a lot when he gets in the
+French trenches, if he ever does."
+
+"He'll get there all right," asserted Bart.  "I hear that the first
+thing the Government will do will be to put the national guard
+regiments in the regular army.  You know the old Thirty-seventh that
+Billy belongs to is mostly made up of Camport boys.  I've half a mind
+to join myself as soon as they get back."
+
+"That might not be a half bad idea," said Frank.  "Although my own
+thought was that as soon as the President called for troops I'd join
+the regular army at once.  But it's as broad as it is long, for, as you
+say, the first thing the Government is likely to do is to make regulars
+of the national guard.  And it won't be a bad thing either, for they've
+had lots of drilling and will be a heap better at the start than raw
+recruits who don't know the first thing about a gun."
+
+"This experience the boys have had on the border hasn't done them any
+harm either," replied Bart.  "Of course most of them haven't had any
+fighting to do, but they've had to be prepared to fight and the outdoor
+life has made them tough and strong.  Billy says you'll hardly know the
+boys for the same fellows when they get back."
+
+"Oh they're a lot of heroes--I don't think," sneered Nick Rabig, who
+was working near by and had heard part of the conversation.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" asked Frank indignantly.
+
+"Just what I say," retorted Rabig.  "They went down to Mexico to catch
+Villa, didn't they?  Well, why didn't they do it?"
+
+"They would if they had stayed long enough," replied Bart.  "The
+Government called them back."
+
+"Sure the Government called them back," said Rabig with a sardonic
+grin.  "It got cold feet.  It saw that Mexico wasn't going to back
+down, and so it backed down itself.  Now if Germany had started out to
+catch Villa, it would have caught him."
+
+"Now cut that out, Rabig," said Frank sharply.  "If the President
+called the soldiers back, he had good reason for doing it.  He knows a
+good deal more about what is going on than the rest of us do.  He
+probably knew that Germany would like nothing better than to see us get
+mixed up in a row with Mexico and have to keep our troops on this side
+of the water instead of sending them over to Europe.  He wasn't going
+to play Germany's game, and that's the reason he let up on Villa, who
+doesn't amount to anything anyway."
+
+"That sounds good," returned Rabig, "but it doesn't go with me.  The
+Americans got scared when they saw that the Mexicans meant business.
+Swell chance the United States would have with Germany when it can't
+even lick Mexico.  These national guard fellows aren't fighters.
+They're only tin soldiers anyway."
+
+"Tell that to Billy Waldon when he gets back and he'll make you eat
+your words," said Bart hotly.
+
+"He will, eh?" retorted Rabig.  "Just let him try it on, that's all."
+
+"What are you anyway, Rabig, a German or an American?" demanded Frank.
+
+"I was born here and I suppose I'm an American," responded Rabig.  "But
+I couldn't help that and I'm not proud of it."
+
+"And you can bet that America isn't proud of having you born here,"
+said Frank scornfully.  "I tell you straight, Rabig, that it won't be
+healthy for you to keep up that line of talk much longer."
+
+"I don't see any one here that's going to make me stop it," sneered the
+bully.  "Perhaps you'd like to try it."
+
+Frank's eyes flashed and his fist clenched until the knuckles were
+white.  Another instant and that fist would have wiped the sneer from
+Rabig's face.  But the image of his mother rose before him, and by a
+mighty effort he controlled himself.
+
+"You'll make that bluff once too often some day, Rabig," he said in an
+even tone.
+
+"Well, if it's a bluff why don't you call it?" sneered Rabig
+truculently.
+
+Just at this moment Reddy ran up to them, considerably excited.
+
+"Mr. Sheldon!" he exclaimed, addressing himself to Frank, "Oliver Twist
+has climbed up the water pipe at the end of the building and now the
+pipe's broke and he can't get down."
+
+Oliver Twist was the office cat, who had gained his name because, like
+the hero in Dickens' famous story, he was continually "asking for
+more."  He was a favorite with all except Rabig, who kicked at him
+whenever he got in his way.  So that the news of his plight aroused
+instant interest and sympathy, and all flocked to the window that Reddy
+indicated.
+
+There was Oliver, sure enough, a thoroughly frightened cat, and with
+good reason.
+
+The building was five stories high and a leader pipe ran at one end of
+it from the top nearly to the ground.  There was a sparrow's nest up
+near the eaves, and Oliver had evidently been tempted to make it a
+visit.  But a section of the pipe about two-thirds of the way up had
+rotted and under the cat's weight had broken off.  Oliver with a cat's
+quickness had saved himself by clutching at a metal ring that encircled
+the pipe just above the broken part and had swung himself up out of
+immediate danger.
+
+But although safe for the moment, he had no way of escape.  He was more
+than three stories from the ground and if he let go would be killed or
+maimed.  If he climbed farther up he would be no better off, for the
+projecting roof of the building made it impossible to leap to it.
+
+Oliver was in a bad fix, and his piteous mews as he clung to the pipe
+showed that he realized it.  All his nine lives were in imminent
+danger.  It would not have been so bad if he had had a ledge or
+projection to rest on until he could be rescued.  But this was lacking,
+with the exception of the narrow ring less than an inch wide that
+encircled the pipe, and though his claws dug desperately against this
+it was certain that his strength would not enable him to maintain
+himself long in this position.
+
+There was a chorus of exclamations and suggestions from the young men
+who crowded the window.
+
+"Let's get a rope and a basket and let it down from the roof,"
+suggested Tom Bradford.
+
+"That wouldn't do," objected Hal.  "He'd be too frightened to get into
+it.  He wouldn't let go his grip on the pipe."
+
+"Somebody get a ladder," cried Reddy.
+
+"We haven't one that would be long enough to reach him," said Bart.
+
+Frank's keen eyes and alert mind had been judging the situation.  Now
+he spoke.
+
+"We can get him from that window, fellows," he said pointing to a
+window about six feet above the cat and a little to one side.
+
+"I don't know," said Bart, dubiously, as he eyed the window.  "Seems to
+me like a forlorn hope.  A fellow would have to have the arms of a
+gorilla to reach the cat from there."
+
+"Never mind about that," responded Frank.  "Let's get up there quick
+and I'll show you what I have in mind."
+
+The crowd raced pell-mell up the stairs and then through an old
+storeroom on the upper floor until they reached the window.
+
+It had not been opened all winter, and had been so warped by sleet and
+snow that it yielded to the pressure of their arms groaningly and
+reluctantly.  But at last, just when they were about ready to give up,
+they accomplished the feat and looked out.
+
+Oliver saw them and hailed them evidently as his last hope, for he
+broke into a storm of wails.
+
+"There," said Bart, regretfully.  "I told you we'd be too far off to do
+him any good."
+
+He leaned out as far as he could without danger of falling, and the cat
+was still three feet at least from the tips of his outstretched fingers.
+
+"Nothing doing," he ejaculated as he withdrew from his vain effort.
+
+"There's just one chance," said Frank.  "One of us fellows will have to
+hang out there head downward, his full length, while the rest grab him
+by the legs and hold on for dear life."
+
+"That sounds easy if you say it quick," cut in Reddy.  "But who's going
+to be the goat?"
+
+"I am," said Frank, as he threw off his coat.
+
+"Oh come now, Frank!" expostulated Tom.  "That's taking too big a risk.
+I hate to see the poor brute go down, but his life isn't worth yours."
+
+"Besides," put in Bart, "even if you got hold of Oliver he'd probably
+be so frightened that he'd claw your head off."
+
+"Cut out the talk, fellows," said Frank.  "Bart, you and Tom hold on to
+one leg while Reddy and Hal grab the other."
+
+Two others of the group, Will Baxter and Dick Ormsby, joined the
+quartette of helpers, although with considerable inward quaking, for
+they felt that if anything happened to their comrade they would be in
+part responsible for not having forcibly detained him from such a risky
+undertaking.
+
+A moment more and Frank had lowered himself outside of the sill and
+hung at full length, while three strong pairs of arms clutched at each
+leg.  He found himself on a level with the cat but too far to one side
+to reach him with his extended hand.
+
+"Start swinging, fellows!" he called out, "until I'm able to reach him."
+
+They swayed him gently to and fro, each time bringing him a few inches
+nearer to the cat, whose strength was rapidly giving way and who seemed
+to be slipping.
+
+Frank made one grab and missed.  His next attempt, however, was more
+fortunate.  He gripped the cat by the neck and shoulders, gave a wrench
+and pulled him away from the pipe.
+
+The frightened brute, seeing only open space below him, writhed and
+twisted about frantically, but Frank held him tight despite his
+clawings, and in another moment the six above had pulled him up to and
+over the sill, where he dropped on the floor, panting and breathless.
+
+Oliver, released, flew round and round the room, until his excitement
+subsided and he curled up in a corner, his sides heaving, and his eyes
+still big and wild from the fright of his late experience.
+
+"And the cat came back!" chanted Reddy.
+
+"The main thing is that Frank came back," said Bart.  "I tell you what,
+old boy, that was a nervy thing to do."
+
+"There isn't another fellow in the place who would have done it," said
+Hal.  "My heart was in my mouth while he was swinging there head down.
+Once I was so scared I almost let go."
+
+"It's lucky for everybody but the undertaker that you didn't," said
+Frank with a grin, as he dusted his clothes and arranged his collar and
+tie.  "I don't mind admitting myself that the ground looked awful far
+away while I was swinging there."
+
+"You're in luck to come out of it with a good pair of eyes," said Bart.
+"If Oliver's claws had once got to them there would have been something
+doing."
+
+"Well now let's get back downstairs," said Frank, leading the way,
+while Reddy brought up the rear with the recovered and somewhat
+chastened Oliver perched upon his shoulder.
+
+It would be safe to say that for some time to come sparrows' nests,
+especially if located near leader pipes, would have no further
+attractions.  For once Oliver Twist would not ask for more!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WAR
+
+As the crowd of young fellows came trooping into the office, old
+Peterson, who alone had kept at his books, looked up with a reproof
+upon his lips.
+
+"What do you fellows think this is, a business office or an athletic
+club?" he demanded.
+
+But the querulous look and tone vanished when he had heard the story of
+Oliver's rescue, and as he turned to his books again the old veteran of
+many battlefields muttered to himself:
+
+"The old American stuff is in the boys yet.  If he's the kind that
+Uncle Sam is going to send to the trenches, Heaven help the Kaiser!"
+
+Three weeks went by, weeks of stern resolve and feverish expectation.
+It was becoming evident now to every mind that America could not, if
+she would, keep out of the war except at the expense of national honor.
+
+Every day brought its toll of sinking ships and murdered crews, of
+wanton brutality and flagrant disregard of plighted faith.  The whole
+world was sickening of the German name.
+
+The city of Camport felt the quickening thrill that was running through
+the continent from coast to coast.  War was the universal topic.  In
+the shop, in the street, in the church, in the courthouse, the one
+prevailing subject was war.
+
+The mad dog of Europe was running wild, and it was up to America to
+join with all the rest of the civilized world in putting an end to his
+depredations.
+
+The Thirty-seventh had come back to Camport from the Mexican border,
+the men hard as nails, sound as nuts, brown as berries, eager and
+ardent for the tremendous task before them, and as the regiment swung
+through the streets, headed by the band, keeping step to the strain of
+martial airs, the little city went wild with enthusiasm.
+
+"There's no use, Frank," said Bart, as with the other young fellows of
+the place they thronged the windows to see the regiment go by.  "I'm
+going to join."
+
+"Same here," said Frank.  "I can feel Uncle Sam's hand on my shoulder
+this minute."
+
+"We're coming father Abraham, one hundred thousand strong!" sang out
+Reddy, from his place on a stool behind them where he had perched
+himself so as to be able to look over their heads.
+
+Just then Billy Waldon passed in the ranks and looked up at them with a
+cheerful grin.
+
+"There's Billy!" cried Tom.  "Oh, boy! wouldn't I like to be marching
+alongside of him!"
+
+"Let's go around to the armory this very night, Frank, and give in our
+names!" cried Bart.  "I tell you, this thing's got me, got me bad."
+
+"It's got me just as bad," said Frank, "and the only question is, in
+just what branch of the service I'm going to enlist when the President
+calls for troops.  I want to see action and see it quick, and I have
+the idea that perhaps the regular army boys will get into the trenches
+sooner than the national guard.  I'll talk it over with my mother
+to-day and then I'll decide."
+
+By the time the noon hour arrived the parade was over, and Frank, with
+his heart and mind full of the stirring scenes he had witnessed, went
+home to lunch.
+
+It was only when the modest little house came into view that his
+thoughts took a more sober turn and his step slowed a little.  Up to
+now he had been thinking chiefly of himself.  He was like a hound
+straining at the leash.  Every instinct in him clamored to be in the
+very thick and front of the coming fight.
+
+But there was his mother, his mother, whose eyes had grown larger and
+more wistful of late as every day had brought nearer and nearer the
+conflict that was about to claim her only son.  He was all that she
+had, her one strong support and sure refuge and loving comrade.
+
+What would she do, alone and anguished in this quiet home while he was
+battling at the front in a rain of shells, of poison gas, of liquid
+fire?
+
+But he must not sadden her by carrying into the house this shadow of
+coming events that for the moment had flung itself over him, and he
+assumed a gaiety that he did not feel as he ran lightly up the steps
+where she, as usual, stood waiting for him in the open door.
+
+She on her part had hidden her heartache beneath a mask of vivacity.
+It was a loving deception where each knew that the other was trying to
+deceive and failing in the attempt.
+
+"Well," she asked, cheerily, as they sat down to the tasteful meal she
+had prepared for him, "what is the news in the city to-day?  It seems
+to me that I have heard nothing but band music all morning."
+
+"I guess the band didn't leave anything out," said Frank with a smile.
+"They played through the whole list of national airs from the "Star
+Spangled Banner" to "Dixie."
+
+"But I heard something else too," went on his mother.  "What was it the
+newsboys were crying through the streets?"
+
+"Oh it was an extra of some kind," said Frank, evasively.
+
+"But of what kind?" asked his mother with a gentle persistence.
+
+"Why, it was about the President's speech," said Frank, reluctantly.
+"He's expected to address the Senate this afternoon, and everybody is
+eager to know what he will have to say."
+
+"I can guess what it will be," said his mother, sadly.
+
+"Yes," agreed Frank, "There's no use blinking the facts, little Mother.
+He's going to declare that the United States is at war with Germany.
+And high time, too!" he burst out, his pent-up convictions finding
+voice.  "We've been patient, Mother, till patience becomes a fault.
+We've waited and hoped and written and argued, and all the while
+Germany has been growing more vile and brutal.  Any further patience
+would be cowardice.  And that's one thing that, with all its faults,
+our country has never been guilty of.  It's up to us now, Mother, every
+one of us," and he emphasized the words, "to show that we're worthy to
+be called Americans."
+
+"Yes," faltered his mother, "I suppose it is--in my heart I know it is.
+But oh, my boy! my boy! how can I let you go?"
+
+"It's duty, Mother," said Frank, gently.  "It isn't a question of
+choice.  I must go.  My country needs me, and I know my mother well
+enough to be sure she would be the last one in the world to hold me
+back."
+
+Before his mother could reply there was a commotion in the street
+outside.  They looked at each other inquiringly and then rose from the
+table and hurried to the window.
+
+Most of the houses in Camport had been decorated with Old Glory in
+honor of the return of the favorite regiment.  Frank had seen to it
+early in the morning that his own flag had swung from a pole set in the
+upper window.
+
+Through the whole length of the street there was not a house that did
+not show from some point of vantage the Stars and Stripes.
+
+The house directly opposite Frank's had gone even further.  Upon one of
+the pillars of the porch had been deftly grouped the flags of France
+and England with Old Glory in the center.  It was a type of the
+alliance that bound together or was soon to bind three of the great
+nations that were to fight side by side the battle of civilization
+against barbarism.
+
+Before the house where these emblems were displayed, a little knot of
+people were arguing and gesticulating.  One of them, a burly fellow,
+had a face that bore the German stamp.  He was greatly excited and his
+arms were waving like windmills as he pointed at the three flags that
+seemed to have stirred him to anger.
+
+Suddenly, in a fit of rage, he broke away from the group, ran up the
+walk to the house, grabbed the offending colors from the pillar of the
+porch and threw them to the ground where he stamped upon them.
+
+Mrs. Sheldon gasped.
+
+With a bound Frank reached the door, flung it open and rushed across
+the street.  The fellow who had vented his rage on the flags looked up.
+He saw Frank coming, and the sight of that flying figure, with taut
+muscles and blazing eyes was not reassuring.
+
+He ran down the walk in an effort to escape.  Frank met him at the
+gate.  Like a flash Frank's fist shot out and the vandal measured his
+length on the ground.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A VANDAL PUNISHED
+
+A crowd rose magically from nowhere.  People came running, shouting,
+jostling, demanding an explanation from their neighbors, who, in turn,
+demanded it of them.
+
+"It's Frank Sheldon!" shouted someone, above the uproar.
+
+"He's making hash of a Hun!" yelled another.  "Come on and see the
+show, fellows--admission free!"
+
+Through all this confusion, Bart, who had been on his way back to the
+office when attracted by the hubbub, pushed and elbowed his way through
+to the first line of observers.
+
+"What's the row, Frank?" he yelled.  "Stop kneeling on that fellow's
+neck and tell us about it.  Look out!" as the fellow made a quick move
+as though to wrench himself free from Frank's grasp.  "Don't let him
+put one over on you."
+
+"Don't worry!"  Frank's face was grim as he rose to his feet dragging
+the now thoroughly cowed German after him.  "There's not a Hun in this
+country or the old that'll be able to get away from me once I get my
+hands on him--not after this day's work.  Do you know what he did?"  He
+gave his captive a ferocious shake and glared about at the
+still-increasing mob.  "Do you know what this yellow dog did, right
+here in the country that's made him?"
+
+"No, give it to us," shouted someone in the crowd, and the rest took it
+up impatiently.
+
+"Yes, give it to us, Sheldon," they cried.  "Get to the point!"
+
+"Look at those flags," Frank cried in answer, pointing with quivering
+finger to the sullied emblems that lay in the dust where the German had
+left them.  "Those are the flags of liberty, justice and right, and
+this dog," his fingers tightened in the man's collar till the craven
+cried out with the pain of it, "dragged them down, threw them in the
+dust, stamped upon them--stamped upon them, fellows!  And our flag, Old
+Glory, is among them!  Do you hear that?  Old Glory is among them!"
+
+An ominous growl went up from the crowd which had been listening
+breathlessly and with growing indignation to Frank's words, and now it
+surged threateningly forward.
+
+"What are we going to do with him?" cried Frank, his eyes afire.  "What
+would you do with a cur like this?"
+
+"Tar and feather him!" cried someone, and a score of voices took it up.
+
+"Tar and feather him! tar and feather him!"
+
+"Ride him out of town on a rail!"
+
+"Aw, that's too easy," yelled another, making a megaphone of his hands
+so that his voice soared above even that deafening babel.  "I've got a
+good tough rope, fellows, tough enough even for this hog here.  What do
+you say?"
+
+"Lynch him! lynch him!" the cry arose deafeningly and the crowd surged
+forward once more closing in upon Frank and his quivering, terrified
+captive.
+
+"Out of the way, Sheldon!"
+
+"Let's get at him!"
+
+"Oh, mein Gott!" wailed the German, sinking on his knees and gazing up
+at Frank with terror-stricken face.  "You will not let dem murder
+me--like dis--in gold blood--you will not--"
+
+"There's not much cold blood about this," said Frank, with a glint in
+his eye and another tightening of his fingers.  "However, we'll let you
+live a little while yet.  You're not fit to die."
+
+"Lynch him! lynch him!" the cry still rose menacingly.  The crowd was
+becoming impatient.
+
+"Wait a minute;" shouted Frank, straightening himself to his full
+height and holding up his hand compellingly.  "We're not going to lynch
+this man.  We're going to punish him worse than that."
+
+The German's face, which had grown hopeful at the beginning of Frank's
+speech, resumed its terrified expression and he sank back despairingly.
+
+The shouts and cries of the crowd had settled down now to a muttering,
+murmuring, undertone so that Frank's voice rose clear and determined
+above it.
+
+"First of all," he said, while the crowd surged forward in mingled
+disappointment and eagerness, "he's going to pick up the flags he has
+dared insult, dust them off carefully and restore them to their former
+position."
+
+The crowd shouted its delight at the suggestion, while the German's
+face grew sullen and he looked stolidly at the ground.
+
+"I vill not do it," he muttered.
+
+"What's that?" queried Frank politely, while his knuckles dug deep into
+his captive's neck.  "I'm afraid I didn't quite understand you.  If you
+will repeat--"
+
+"I said I vould not do it," cried the German, with a sudden flare up of
+his old rage and hatred.  "Und vat I say I mean."
+
+"But I'm sure you will change your mind," Frank answered still gently,
+while the crowd watched eagerly.  "Within the next minute I am almost
+sure you are going to pick up the flags, dust them off neatly and put
+them back where you found them.  If a little pressure is needed, why, I
+am always willing to oblige."
+
+A sharp twist of the collar he held brought a guttural cry of pain from
+the Prussian and a crow of delight from the crowd.
+
+"More yet?" queried Frank with another twist that brought the man to
+his knees whimpering.  "Or will you do what I suggested?"
+
+"I will do it," growled the German, hatred and pain in the glance he
+flung his captor.  "Led me go und I vill do it."
+
+"Good," said Frank.  "I'll let you do it but I won't let you go.  I
+love you too much.  Right this way."
+
+The crowd gave way before the advance of captor and captive, and before
+them all the German was forced to pick up the flags, dust them to the
+entire satisfaction of his gleeful audience, and, with Frank's knuckles
+still urging him on, replace them to the best of his clumsy ability as
+he had found them.
+
+With the flags of the triple alliance floating once more proudly in the
+breeze, the throng sent up a mighty shout.  Hats were thrown in the air
+and cries were heard.
+
+"That's Old Glory for you!  The more they try to down her the higher up
+she flies!"
+
+"That's what the whole German nation's going to do when we get our boys
+over there!"
+
+"We'll make 'em tremble in their boots!"
+
+"And now," cried Frank, "our German friend will stand at salute and
+sing the Star Spangled Banner with all the expression I know his love
+for our country will prompt."
+
+The German balked again but under the same gentle pressure as before
+sang in husky tones and guttural accents the stirring measures of our
+national hymn.
+
+"And last of all," shouted Frank, while the throng, wild with delight,
+surged forward once more, "our dear enemy will, with all the reverence
+due the greatest flag in the world, kneel here in the dust and kiss the
+Stars and Stripes.  Now then, kneel."
+
+"I vill not," cried the German, trying to wrench himself free.  "You
+cannot force me--"
+
+"We'll see about that," said Frank, while the crowd grew threatening
+once more.  "Will you do it--or shall I make you?"
+
+"I will not do it," the Prussian reiterated stubbornly.  "I have done
+all the rest but dat I vill not."
+
+"Kiss the flag," cried Frank, now thoroughly aroused, his knuckles
+showing white as they gripped his captive's collar.  "Come on--we're
+waiting."
+
+Slowly and relentlessly he forced the German to his knees, and driven
+by pain and fear of the mob his captive finally touched his lips to the
+flag.
+
+"And now," cried Frank, flinging the Prussian from him and dusting off
+his hands as though they were polluted, "make yourself scarce.  But
+remember after this to respect the American flag.  Americans are behind
+it!"
+
+The crowd pushed and jostled the disheveled vandal as he slunk away and
+then, after cheering Frank, gradually dispersed.
+
+"Boy, it was neat work!" cried Bart, as the two friends crossed the
+street together.  "Coming on to the office?"
+
+"No, I've got to see mother first and straighten my tie," grinned
+Frank.  "I'll probably catch up to you though.  So long."
+
+Frank found his mother awaiting him with outstretched arms.
+
+"Oh, my boy," she cried, "you were splendid!  If you will wait just a
+little while till our affairs are more settled I will not say a word to
+your joining the army.  If all Germans are like that--"
+
+"They are, Mother," replied Frank, grimly.  "Germany is a nation of men
+like him.  What he did to our flags the whole Prussian empire is trying
+to do to the world."
+
+"Then you must go!" cried his mother, holding him from her and
+regarding him with flaming eyes.  "Because I love my son, I will give
+him--for my dear France and for America!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE DIE IS CAST
+
+"That's it, Mother," cried Frank, his whole soul responding to the
+kindling spirit in her eyes.  "For America and France, the two greatest
+republics in the world.  It won't be the first time they've fought
+together."
+
+"No," replied his mother proudly.  "Lafayette and other brave sons of
+France helped this country to win its independence, and it is only
+right that now when France is hard pressed and pouring out her blood
+like water, Americans should fight side by side with her to make the
+world safe for democracy."
+
+"You're a true daughter of France, Mother," said Frank, admiringly.
+
+"Ah, _la belle_ France," sighed his mother.  "I love her with all my
+heart and soul.  How many times I have longed to go back and see her
+sunny vineyards and her beautiful cities."
+
+"You and father were planning to go over there just before the war
+broke out, weren't you, Mother?" asked Frank.
+
+"Yes," replied Mrs. Sheldon.  "And for two reasons.  I was wild to see
+the dear homeland again, and then, too, I felt I ought to go to see
+about the property my father, your grandfather, left me.  But then your
+dear father died, and after that I had no heart to go.  Nor could I
+have gone anyway, had I wished, for the war would have made it almost
+impossible."
+
+"Well, we don't care much for the property, Mother," said Frank.
+"While I've got two strong arms I'll support you.  And yet," he added,
+a little more thoughtfully, "it wouldn't have been a bad thing if we
+had been able to sell it so that you could have the money now when I am
+liable to be called away.  We've got only this house and the little
+money that dad left us, and I'm afraid you will have all you can do to
+get along."
+
+"Don't worry about me," replied the mother in a tone that strove to be
+cheerful.  "You know I have the true French thrift--you've said
+yourself that I am a wonderful manager--I can make a little money go a
+long way.  The only reason I ever cared for the property was for your
+sake, so that you could get a good start in the world.  I don't know
+now that we can ever get it.  It was tangled up in a lawsuit and that
+was one of the reasons why I ought to have been there in person when
+the estate was being settled."
+
+"Never mind, little Mother," cried Frank gaily, "I'm the richest fellow
+in the world this minute with such a mother as you are."
+
+He gave her a quick embrace and kiss and hurried out of the house, for
+he had been away from the office considerably longer than usual.  But
+quick as was the time he made in getting downtown, the news of his
+exploit had preceded him and he found the place buzzing with excitement.
+
+Bart, who had let the story lose nothing in the telling, gave him a
+resounding thump on the back as he came in.
+
+"Here's the fellow that made the Hun eat crow," he cried, jubilantly.
+
+"And from all accounts it didn't agree with him," grinned Tom.  "It was
+a dandy bit of work, Frank.  I only wish I'd been there to see you make
+the Hun kiss the flag."
+
+"Bully for you, old scout!" cried Hal.  "There's a lot of other fellows
+in this town that ought to get the same treatment.  I know some of them
+that had a regular party the day the news came that the _Lusitania_ was
+sunk."
+
+"I heard of that, too," said Frank.  "But we want to remember, fellows,
+that not all Germans felt that way.  Some of them felt just as shocked
+and outraged over it as we did ourselves.  There are lots of fellows
+with German blood in their veins that are just as good Americans as we
+are."
+
+"I suppose there are," conceded Bart, a little grudgingly.  "Not all of
+them are tarred with the same brush.  But there are too many of them
+who regard Germany as their father and America as their father-in-law,
+and you know which one of the two a fellow is apt to like better."
+
+Just then Rabig passed through the room on his way to another part of
+the building.  He cast a sour look upon the group, and there was
+special malignity in his gaze as it rested for a moment on Frank.
+
+"You're about as popular with Rabig as a rattlesnake is with a picnic
+party," laughed Bart, as Rabig went on.  "If looks could kill you'd be
+a dead man this minute.  He hated you before, but he hates you worse
+now since he's heard of that little fracas.  Gee, how I'd like to see
+him have to kneel and kiss the flag!"
+
+"He'd try to bite it," put in Reddy.
+
+At this moment a group of newsboys passed outside, shouting their
+extras.
+
+"I guess that means the President's gone and done it," cried Frank.
+"Here, Reddy, take this dime and go out and get one of those papers.
+If you're back in half a minute you can keep the change."
+
+"Whoop-ee!" cried Reddy, and was off like a bullet from a gun.  Soon he
+was back with the coveted paper, still damp from the press.
+
+Across the top in screaming headlines was the phrase:
+
+_President Declares War on Germany!_
+
+"That settles it," said Frank.  "We're in for it, now."
+
+"Up to the neck," put in Reddy, whose small frame held an unlimited
+amount of patriotism.  "Gee, I wish I was old enough to get in it.  I
+wouldn't wait for no draft!"
+
+"And now that we're in, we're in for keeps.  That's America's way,"
+said Bart.
+
+"She's put her hand to the plow and she won't turn back," said old
+Peterson, solemnly, and into his dim eyes came the light that had shone
+there when, in his youth, he had stormed with his regiment the heights
+of Lookout Mountain.
+
+There was little more work done in the office that day.  Business, for
+the time, seemed a trivial thing.  Something far greater and nobler
+filled the hearts of these ardent young Americans.
+
+They heard the tramp of marching multitudes, they saw their country's
+flag unfurled, those glorious Stars and Stripes, that had never been
+smirched with dishonor, or gone down in defeat.  And in their hearts
+they swore that what had been true in the past should be true, too, in
+the future, though they might shed their blood and lose their lives in
+making it true.
+
+A great mass meeting was organized that night and Bart and Frank
+attended it.  The hall was thronged, and eloquent speakers voiced the
+feeling that filled the hearts of all.  But nothing stirred them so
+strongly as when the final orator closed his speech with a scathing
+denunciation of the Prussian foe, quoted from one of America's noblest
+sons:
+
+"They have gone forth to battle in the spirit of their ancestral Huns.
+Wreckers of cathedrals, destroyers of libraries, despoilers of
+cemeteries, slayers of old men and women and children, barbarians by
+instinct, pirates and incendiaries by practice, terrorists by training,
+slaves by habit and bullies by profession--maiming, poisoning, burning,
+suffocating, deporting, enslaving, murderers of the very souls of a
+people so far as it is in their power--the rest of the world can live
+on terms of peace and good will with them only after they have drained
+to the dregs the bitter cup of military defeat!"
+
+Thunders of applause swept through the hall as the speaker finished.
+
+"Say, but that was a rattling speech," remarked Bart, as the two chums
+walked home together.
+
+"Yes," agreed Frank, "it was magnificent.  But after all, Bart, it will
+take more than words to win this war.  It's up to us to turn those
+words into deeds.  It's bullets and bayonets that count!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+FOR LOVE OF COUNTRY
+
+Although it was nearly midnight when he reached home, Frank found his
+mother sitting up and waiting for him.
+
+"You shouldn't have sat up for me, Mother," he said, in tones of tender
+reproach.  "It's too bad that you should be robbed of your sleep like
+this."
+
+"I don't mind as long as I know you're coming," replied his mother.
+"It is the other nights I shall dread, the nights when I shall not hear
+your footsteps on the porch, and I'm afraid that time is coming very
+soon."
+
+"I fear it is, Mother," he replied gently.  "There's only one thing
+left for me to do.  I have felt it before, but I feel it more than ever
+after what I've heard to-night.  I wish you'd been there, Mother, and
+heard the unbelievable things I did about the way the Germans are
+carrying on this war.  And yet again I'm glad you weren't, for it would
+have turned your very soul sick.  There's no use talking, the Prussian
+spirit must be crushed, and until it is, this world won't be a fit
+place to live in."
+
+"I know you are right, dear," responded Mrs. Sheldon.  "And though it
+breaks my heart to have you go, I'll give you up as cheerfully as I can
+and try to live through the long days when you're away from me.  Of one
+thing I feel sure, that wherever you go, or whatever your country calls
+upon you to do, you'll make me proud of you."
+
+"I'll do my best, Mother," Frank replied.  "I'm not going for glory or
+for promotion or anything else except to see my country win the war.
+All I ask is a chance to do my bit."
+
+Camport was a changed city the next day.  A new spirit and new purpose
+were visible in the looks of all.  The long strain of waiting was over
+and America was girding herself for the fight.
+
+"Well," old Peterson was saying as Frank entered the office, "it's up
+to you young fellows to show that America's still got the stuff.  I
+only wish I were young enough to shoulder a gun and go myself."
+
+"You've done your share, Mr. Peterson," said Bart.  "If the boys of
+to-day do as well as those who wore the blue and gray they'll show the
+Prussians where they get off."
+
+"It will make a big change in this place," said the old bookkeeper, as
+he looked around at the group of eager faces.  "You young roosters all
+seem to be aching to get into the scrap, and there won't be any of you
+left."
+
+"Rabig will be here," piped up Reddy, and there was a general laugh.
+
+"I could spare him," growled old Peterson, with whom Rabig was about as
+unpopular as he was with the younger men.
+
+"Well, fellows, let's count noses," said Frank.  "How many of us are
+going to enlist and how many of us are going to wait for the draft?"
+
+"Enlist! enlist!" came in a general chorus, reinforced by Reddy's
+shrill treble.
+
+"You'll have to wait awhile, Reddy," laughed Frank.  "Your heart's all
+right, but Uncle Sam isn't ready for the kids yet."
+
+"Mr. Peterson said there were boys in the Union army only fourteen
+years old," grumbled Reddy.  "And if they could fight I don't see why I
+can't."
+
+"I'm going into the navy," announced Dick Ormsby, whose father was a
+retired sea captain.  "I've got the love of blue water in my veins I
+guess, and I'm aching to get a chance to pot a German U-boat."
+
+"Me for the aviators!" cried Will Baxter.  "I always wanted to be a
+high flyer--now I've got the chance.  I know all about running a
+motorcycle and that ought to help a lot."
+
+"I'd like to join the cavalry," joined in Hal Chase.  "But they don't
+seem to have much use for them in this war.  Horses can't go over
+trenches and barbed wire fences."
+
+"The infantry's good enough for me," declared Frank.
+
+"And for me, too," echoed Bart.  "Uncle Sam needs men in every branch,
+but after all, it's the hand to hand fighting of the armies that's
+going to decide this war."
+
+At this moment, Mr. Moore, the senior member of the firm, came out from
+his office.  He was a large man with a genial face and bearing, and was
+generally liked by his employees to whom he was fair and just.
+
+His eyes twinkled as he saw the alacrity with which the young men
+scattered to their desks.
+
+"Don't worry, boys," he said.  "I know that your minds aren't much on
+business to-day, and I don't wonder.  To tell the truth, I'd be sorry
+if they were.  There come times when there's only one important thing
+in the world, and this is one of the times.  I've got just a word to
+say to you boys," he went on.  "I don't know just what each one of you
+is planning to do in connection with this war.  Each one of you must
+decide that matter for himself.  From things I've heard, most of you
+seem eager to go.  I shall be sorry to lose you, for we never were
+busier than we are now, but I should be still more sorry to have you
+stay here when your country needs you at the front.
+
+"Mr. Thomas and I have been talking this thing over and we want to say
+to you that as far as the money part of it is concerned you needn't
+hesitate.  We're not going to let you lose a cent by following your
+patriotic instinct.  Some of you have dependents at home who rely in
+part or wholly upon what you earn.  So we have decided that your
+salaries will go on as usual--that is, that we will make up the
+difference between what the Government pays you and what you are
+getting now.  In that way you will be able to serve your country with
+nothing on your mind except the best and quickest way to win the war."
+
+A spontaneous cheer rose from the young men, as with a smile and wave
+of his hand their employer turned back to his office.
+
+"Gee, but he's a game sport!" exclaimed Reddy, voicing forcibly if
+inelegantly the feeling of all.
+
+If there had been any hesitation before, this generous speech removed
+it and now the boys were ready for action.
+
+That very evening Frank and Bart, accompanied by Billy Waldon, went to
+the headquarters of the Thirty-seventh regiment.  Here they put in
+their applications for enlistment.
+
+There were few formalities, for the regiment was eager to recruit its
+numbers up to full strength.
+
+Neither one of the chums had any trouble in passing the physical
+examination, for both were splendid specimens of manhood.  Frank was
+six feet tall in his stocking feet, straight and lithe as an Indian,
+and with fine muscular development.
+
+Bart, who was two inches shorter, was broad shouldered, well set up,
+and capable of great endurance.  All the prodding of the doctors failed
+to reveal the slightest defect, and they passed the test triumphantly.
+
+Then they took the oath of allegiance, promising in words what they had
+long since promised in their hearts, and were duly enrolled as members
+of the famous regiment.
+
+"Well, now you're one of us, boys," cried Billy, as he grasped the hand
+of each warmly.  "And, believe me, it's a great old regiment to belong
+to.  Come along and I'll show you some of the flags we carried in the
+Civil War."
+
+They went with him through the armory and saw some of the treasured
+relics that the regiment cherished as its most priceless possessions.
+
+There were the old flags, blackened with powder, torn with bullets,
+that had gone through the fire of Antietam and Gettysburg and
+Chickamauga.
+
+The boys took off their hats as they stood before them.
+
+There were the cannon that had thundered on the banks of the Rapidan
+and in the valley of the Shenandoah.  A glass case covered a letter of
+commendation for a wild charge that had saved the day at Shiloh.  There
+was the blood-stained hat of the colonel who had fallen while leading
+the regiment at Gaines' Mill.
+
+"That was the kind of stuff the regiment was made up of in the old
+days," said Billy, proudly.
+
+"It's a glorious record," said Frank, reverently.  "And now it's up to
+us to show that what the old boys did in Virginia, the young fellows
+are going to do again in France!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+OFF TO CAMP
+
+Now that the momentous step had been taken, the boys buckled down to
+work--work of the hardest and most strenuous kind.
+
+They left their positions with Moore and Thomas the next day, with the
+hearty good wishes of the firm and the assurance that their places
+would be ready for them as soon as they returned.
+
+The only gloomy member of the office force was Tom Bradford, who had
+also applied for enlistment but had been rejected on account of his
+teeth.  Now he had on a grouch of the grouchiest kind.
+
+"Hang the red tape!" he growled.  "What have a fellow's teeth got to do
+with it?  I don't want to bite the Germans, I want to shoot them."
+
+"Never mind, old scout," comforted Bart.  "Perhaps the dentist can fix
+that up.  Anyway you can root for us if you can't go along."
+
+"Not much nourishment in that," grunted Tom, refusing to be shaken from
+his attitude of settled gloom.
+
+"It does seem mighty hard," remarked Bart, after Tom had left them.  "I
+don't think the Government ought to be so particular.  The time may
+come when they'll be glad enough to get such fine fellows as Tom, teeth
+or no teeth."
+
+"Perhaps so," agreed Frank; "but just now they've got such a lot of
+material that they can afford to pick and choose.  And after all,
+perhaps they're right.  They've got to have a pretty high level of
+physical condition."
+
+"I suppose you're right," said Bart, adding: "Suppose poor old Tom
+should get a toothache in the trenches.  You can't expect to have
+dentists on tap."
+
+"As far as that goes," Frank took him up quickly, grinning at the
+picture that rose before his mind, "I should think a good hard
+toothache would be an asset.  You'd be so mad you could kill a dozen
+Germans.  It would just be getting your mind off your agony."
+
+Bart grinned.
+
+"Yes and it would have another advantage.  When you've got a toothache
+you don't care whether you live or die.  Getting stabbed with a bayonet
+would be almost a relief."
+
+"That's so," laughed Frank.  "He'd be something like the seasick
+passenger who, for the first hour, was afraid he was going to die and
+after that was afraid he couldn't.  I suppose Uncle Sam figures it this
+way," he went on, "if a chain has a single weak link in it the whole
+chain is weak.
+
+"You know how it is in a crowd.  A hundred people may be eager to get
+out of a place, but if two or three in front are slow it holds up the
+whole hundred.  But I'm willing to bet that someway or somehow Tom will
+manage to get in."
+
+"I hope so, anyway," said Bart.  "I'd like to have the old scout along
+with us."
+
+A day or two later the boys got their uniforms and then they began to
+feel like genuine soldiers.  It set them apart from other men and
+emphasized the fact that from now on they had but one aim in life, to
+fight and, if need be, die for Uncle Sam.
+
+The first sight of Frank in khaki was a stab at the mother heart of
+Mrs. Sheldon, although she could not avoid a thrill of admiration at
+the splendid figure that he made.  To her it meant separation, a
+separation that was coming swiftly nearer with each passing day.  And
+there might be no reunion!
+
+But, although her lips were tremulous, her eyes were bright and she
+kept her forebodings bravely under cover.  She was a thoroughbred, and
+it was easy to see where Frank had inherited his spirit.
+
+"How proud your father would be if he could see you now," she said with
+a slight tremble in her voice, which she strove to conceal.
+
+"Perhaps he does," said Frank reverently.  "If he were here I know that
+he would approve of what I'm doing."
+
+The days were all too short now for the work that was crowded into
+them.  Government preparations were going on with feverish rapidity.
+Events followed one another as though on wings.
+
+The order had gone forth for the draft and another order had decreed
+that the regiments of the national guard should be enrolled in and form
+part of the regular army.
+
+This latter order was the subject of some regret with the members of
+the old Thirty-seventh, whose pride in their regiment was intense and
+who had hoped to have it remain intact under its old officers for the
+period of the war.
+
+"We'll lose our identity now," mourned Billy Waldon.  "We'll just be
+part of some big rainbow division, made up of fellows from all over the
+United States.  For my part, I think it's a mistake.  I think the
+regiment would fight better under its own colors and with its old
+traditions to inspire it."
+
+"We mustn't criticize the Government, Billy," said Frank.  "My theory
+all through this war is going to be that Uncle Sam is right.  He's got
+good reasons for everything he does."
+
+"'Them's my sentiments'," put in Bart.  "Whether we have the regimental
+colors or not, we'll all be fighting under the one flag, Old Glory, and
+it's only the Stars and Stripes that counts, after all.  To me there's
+an inspiration in the thought of the whole United States, from the
+Atlantic to the Pacific, fighting as a unit."
+
+"Well, perhaps you're right," said Billy, somewhat mollified.  "At any
+rate, nothing can take away from us the fact that we're volunteers."
+
+A few days passed, then orders came that the regiment should be
+assembled at the armory to be kept there day and night until they
+should be sent to Camp Boone--as we shall call the cantonment that had
+been prepared for them.
+
+To Frank's mother the order sounded like the knell of doom.  It was the
+final step of separation.  The word had passed that the boys were to
+bring all their belongings to the armory as no leave would be given
+under any circumstances.
+
+"Good-bye, dear boy!" she began bravely, and then all her courage gave
+way to a storm of tears.
+
+Frank's own eyes were wet as he folded her closely to him and comforted
+her as best he could, though feeling very much in need of comfort
+himself.
+
+"Bear up, Mother," he urged.  "It will only be a little while before I
+come marching home again, and I'll be thinking of you all the time and
+write to you whenever I get a chance."
+
+He forced himself to go at last with many a backward look and wave of
+his hand at the figure in the doorway.  His heart was heavy as he
+reflected that in the chances of war he might never see her again.
+
+The next few days were full of excitement, allowing him little time to
+brood.  Both he and Bart took to a soldier's life as a duck takes to
+water.  The martial spirit was there together with the quick
+intelligence that enables America to turn out finished soldiers more
+quickly than any other country in the world.
+
+They had an advantage too in being sandwiched in, as it were, with the
+men who had just come back from the Mexican border and had had such
+recent experience in practical outdoor preparation for fighting.
+
+Billy Waldon, especially, was a mine of information and suggestion, and
+as they threw themselves into the work with all their heart and soul it
+was not long before they could feel that they were graduating from the
+"rookie" class and becoming regular soldiers.
+
+Their commanding officers looked on them with approval and secretly
+wished that all of their recruits might be of the same high-class type.
+
+"You're going along like a house afire, fellows," said Billy, after
+drill had ended one morning.  "The manual of arms is just pie for you.
+Kitchener used to think that it took a year to turn out a soldier.
+I'll bet if he'd been on this side of the water he'd have felt
+differently.
+
+"I'm glad you think so," said Frank.  "But after all, we're just going
+through the motions now.  The test will come a little later on."
+
+"I'd bet on you now or any time," answered Billy.
+
+The looked-for orders came at last from Washington, and there was a
+great stir and bustle at the armory.  Then the next morning the great
+doors swung open and the regiment marched forth, headed by its band.
+
+Through the old familiar streets it marched, amid the cheers and tears
+of those who packed the sidewalks, past the commercial house of Moore
+and Thomas, where old Peterson waved his hand tremulously and Reddy,
+with Oliver Twist perched upon his shoulder, shouted himself hoarse and
+nearly fell out of the window in his enthusiasm, down to the railroad
+station where the long train waited for them.
+
+There they broke ranks while friends and relatives, fathers and
+mothers, sisters and brothers, sweethearts and wives, crowded around
+them, pressing last gifts into their hands, caressing them, enthusing
+them, crying over them, until the warning whistle blew and they were
+forced to tear themselves away.
+
+Those few moments had been precious ones to Frank and his mother, for
+in them they had compressed a world of affection, that fell from their
+lips and looked from their eyes.
+
+"I won't say good-bye, little Mother," said Frank.  "It's just _au
+revoir_."
+
+"Yes, dear," agreed his mother tremulously.  "_Au revoir_.  What is
+that?" she interrupted herself with a start.  "Ah, it is the whistle.
+My boy, my boy, I cannot let you go.  Yes, I will be brave," Frank
+turned his head aside to hide his own emotion as his mother
+pathetically tried to smile.  "There, go, dear, go,--before my
+resolution breaks entirely.  _Au revoir_--my boy--my boy--"
+
+With a little strangled sound in his throat Frank tore himself away
+and, without trusting himself to look back, climbed into the car with
+his jostling comrades.  Then he leaned far out of the window, caught
+his mother to him and kissed her.
+
+The whistle shrieked again, and amid a storm of cheers and waving of
+handkerchiefs the train moved out.  The old Thirty-seventh had started
+on the road to victory!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A NEW LIFE
+
+For some time after the train had started the spirits of the men were
+subdued.  All were thinking of the dear ones they had left behind and
+might never see again.  They were thinking too of the new life--or was
+it, perhaps, death?--that they were facing.
+
+But it was not in the nature of things that this feeling should long
+persist amid such a buoyant, boisterous gathering of young fellows and
+before long the cars of the train were resounding with jests and
+laughter.
+
+"How far off is this Camp Boone?" asked Bart, who had secured a seat at
+Frank's side.
+
+"I haven't exactly figured it out," replied the latter, as he stretched
+his long legs comfortably, "but in the rough, it's about three hundred
+miles.  The way the tracks are crowded now, I don't think we'll get
+there much before to-morrow morning."
+
+"I don't suppose they'll have it half ready for us," continued Bart.
+"The Government's had to put it up in an awful hurry."
+
+"We can't expect to find all the comforts of home," returned Frank.
+"But as long as we have a place to sleep and three square meals a day I
+guess there won't be much kick coming."
+
+"There will be no discount on the grub," put in Billy Waldon.  "Uncle
+Sam's a good provider and he'll see that his boys have plenty to eat."
+
+Frank's prediction was fulfilled, for it was early the next morning
+when the train stopped at the little town from which Camp Boone was
+about three miles distant.
+
+It was a glorious morning for a hike and after the commissary
+department had done its duty and each man had tucked away a good
+breakfast under his belt the regiment fell into line and covered the
+intervening miles in quick time.  All were filled with eagerness to see
+the place that was to be their home during many months of training.
+
+It was a busy scene that met their eyes when at last they came within
+view of the camp.  A small army of workmen was swarming all over the
+place and the sounds of hammers and groaning of derricks and hum of
+machinery filled the air with a deafening din.
+
+"Didn't I tell you it would be only half finished?" said Bart.  "I hope
+they've got roofs on the barracks.  They say they have bad weather
+around here and I don't want to get killed before I meet a German.
+Gee, that would be tough luck!"
+
+"You can't build a city in a single night," Frank replied, as he saw
+the apparently endless row of buildings prepared for their reception.
+"And that's what this is going to be--a city in itself.  The wonder to
+me is, not that they've done so little but that they've done so much."
+
+"They say there are going to be thirty thousand soldiers here," put in
+Billy Waldon.  "Before a month is over there'll be more fellows living
+here than people in the whole city of Camport.  That gives you some
+idea of the work the Government has to do.  But Uncle Sam is some
+worker when he once takes his coat off.  Even the Kaiser will admit
+that before he gets through with him."
+
+The regiment had filed through the great gate in perfect order, but
+once inside, the officers quickly gave the command to break ranks, for
+they themselves were quite as eager as the men to inspect their new
+quarters.
+
+The camp had been skillfully laid out by one of the most distinguished
+architects in the country.  Its general form was that of the letter U
+about two miles long and a mile in width.  The ground was slightly
+rolling and had been nearly cleared of trees in order to permit the
+erection of the buildings.
+
+But the architect had not sacrificed everything to mere utility for in
+one corner of the camp a large grove of noble trees had been left
+untouched and took away from the bareness of the general plan.
+
+Along the sides of the camp stretched the barracks, plain, two-story
+frame buildings hastily put together and guiltless of any attempt at
+decoration.
+
+On the floors were endless rows of cots with just enough space left to
+afford a passage between them.  There were no heating arrangements as
+yet, but, as summer was just beginning, this was a matter of no
+importance and there would be ample time for that later on.
+
+There were separate buildings that served as mess halls for the various
+regiments.  The officers' buildings were grouped together in a special
+section and these, although plain, were a little more elaborate than
+those destined for the men.
+
+Besides these there was a host of other buildings, stables for the
+horses, laundries, lavatories, shower baths and all the other
+structures that were essential to a city that had sprung up like
+Jonah's gourd, almost over night.
+
+"Not half bad, eh, old man?" said Bart, giving his chum a bang on the
+shoulder.
+
+"I should say not," replied Frank.  "They don't seem to have forgotten
+much.  It's neat but not gaudy."
+
+"Now if our friend, the chef, is all right," grinned Bart, "and isn't
+stingy with the grub, we'll have nothing left to ask for."
+
+"We'll get a line on that pretty soon, I hope," said Frank, his eyes
+wandering wistfully in the direction of the mess tent.  "That hike's
+made me hungry enough to eat nails.  When the mess horn toots you won't
+be able to see me, I'll run so fast."
+
+"I'll race you," said Bart.  "Mother used to say I had the appetite of
+a wolf.  Now I feel like a pack of 'em."
+
+Any misgivings that they might have had on that subject were promptly
+dispelled by their first meal in camp.  The food served was well cooked
+and abundant and those who sought a second or even a third helping were
+not denied.
+
+"Well," remarked Bart, with a sigh born of comfort and repletion as he
+rose from the meal, "I guess Napoleon was right when he said that an
+army travels on its stomach."
+
+"Gee, if that's so, Uncle Sam's boys will travel some distance," said
+Billy Waldon with a grin.
+
+"As far as Berlin, you bet!" cried Frank emphatically.
+
+Before many days had passed the regiment had fully settled down into
+the routine of army life at Camp Boone.
+
+That routine was almost unvarying and therein lay its value in molding
+the growing army into a perfect fighting machine.  It fostered team
+work of the finest kind.
+
+At six o'clock the bugle blew reveille that called the sleepers from
+their cots.  There was no disregarding that imperative summons, no
+turning over for another "forty winks."
+
+In an instant the sleeping camp had sprung to life.  Uniforms were
+donned, faces washed, hair slicked back and cots made inside of fifteen
+minutes.
+
+Then came the "monkey drill" and setting-up exercises, when the boys
+had to go through all sorts of grotesque but beneficial motions to
+exercise the muscles and stir the blood.
+
+Of course there was some grumbling at first.  Bart, who with all his
+physical fitness, liked to get his sleep out in the morning, had hard
+work to get his eyes open and feet on the floor at the same moment.
+
+"Gee, how do you do it?" he grumblingly asked of Frank one morning,
+just after reveille and while he was rushing around with tousled head
+and one eye shut.  "By the time I know I'm awake you're all ready, and
+worse than that, you look as if you enjoyed it.  Gee, it's a gift!"
+
+"You're like the man," Frank had remarked cheerfully, as he trussed up
+his trousers, "who was sentenced to die at daybreak.  'Oh, that's all
+right,' he answered.  'I never get up that early!'"
+
+But the setting up exercises never failed to banish the last vestige of
+drowsiness, and by seven o'clock breakfast began to assume gigantic
+proportions.  And how they ate!
+
+After breakfast came the manual of arms, field practice, drilling in
+semaphore work and sometimes--this the boys looked forward to and
+enjoyed most,--a long hike in the spring sunshine to the exhilarating
+beat of martial music.
+
+Then from eleven to two they did as they pleased and as dinner came
+within that period they mostly, to quote Billy Waldon, "wolfed."
+
+The meals continued hearty and satisfying and as the days went on the
+boys broadened out and seemed, by the aid of muscular training and
+upright carriage, even to gain in height.
+
+One morning Frank found a poem in a magazine he was reading and recited
+it to a group of laughing comrades.  Thereafter it became the popular
+mess chant and the boys standing in line with their dishes would shout
+it out at the top of their lusty lungs to the great amusement of all
+concerned.  It went something like this:
+
+  "You may mutter and swear at the reveille call
+    With its 'Can't get 'em up in the morning;'
+  And you may not be fond of assembly at all
+    But you drop into line at the warning;
+  Police call will cause you a lot of distress
+    Though you answer at once or regret it,
+  But you jump when the splinter lips bugle for mess
+    And the hash slinger yells, 'Come and get it!'"
+
+
+  Then came the chorus in which all joined:
+
+  "For you know that it means
+    'Form in line for your beans
+  With your mess kit in hand--do it now!'
+    And you cheerfully come for your coffee and slum,
+    For your coffee and slum
+  When the splinter lips bugle for chow!"
+
+
+It was all great fun, this jolly camp life, but it had its serious side
+also.  All the boys felt the inspiration, almost exaltation of being
+one of so great a body of men, men fired with the same enthusiasm, the
+same great purpose to accomplish their glorious mission or die in the
+attempt.
+
+Training in the use of modern weapons of warfare sobered the boys a
+little.
+
+"I suppose I'm squeamish," said Bart to Frank one day, when they had
+finished a lesson in the throwing of hand grenades, "and I won't blame
+you or anybody else if you laugh at me.  But I don't like those things.
+Every time I throw one I think of the possible mark it'll find some day
+in the German trenches and it makes me sick."
+
+"Yes," said Frank, nodding gravely, "I know just how you feel, only
+it's the bayonet practice that gets me most.  If those dummies were
+human instead of stuffed rags, I couldn't feel much worse about
+sticking the point into them.'
+
+"Oh, we're soft yet," said Billy, sauntering up to them.  "I suppose it
+will take us quite some time to get hardened to this wholesale
+slaughter.  But when we feel too squeamish, we want to remember the
+Belgian women and children murdered and tortured, defenseless old men
+slaughtered--"
+
+"Yes," said Frank, his shoulders squaring and mouth setting grimly.
+"There's nothing like the memory of Dinant to make a fellow grip his
+bayonet!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+INSTRUMENTS OF DEATH
+
+As time went on the boys became quite expert in bayonet practice.  A
+French officer who had seen some of the bloodiest fighting on the Somme
+was their instructor, and he was voluble in his praise of the "_esprit
+de coeur_" the young men showed.
+
+Of course in the beginning there were some laggards, but these were
+promptly whipped into line by officers and comrades.
+
+"It is maybe all right now to laugh and take the little interest," the
+Frenchman was fond of saying to these few who lagged behind.  "But when
+you are in the trench, fighting hand to hand with your enemy, more
+accomplished than you, it will not be so great a joke.  You will not
+laugh then!"
+
+"He's right too," remarked Fred Anderson, one of the veteran members of
+the regiment who had seen service in the Philippine Islands.  "There
+will be plenty of hand-to-hand fighting where it's cut and thrust, and
+the man who can handle his weapon best will come out on top."
+
+"I suppose most of your own experience has been along that line," said
+Frank.
+
+"Yes," replied Fred, as a reminiscent look came into his eyes.  "Of
+course that dinky little war in the Philippines wasn't to be compared
+with this, but there was lots of savage fighting just the same.  More
+than once I've been within an ace of losing the number of my mess."
+
+"What's the tightest place you were ever in?" asked Bart.
+
+"The thing I remember most was a scrap we had with the Moros," replied
+Fred.  "That was pretty hot while it lasted.
+
+"You see," he went on, "those fellows had been acting nasty and had
+given a good deal of trouble to one of our outposts.  So our lieutenant
+was ordered to take a detachment in a launch and go up a little river
+that led to a settlement of theirs and give them a lesson.
+
+"We landed at the nearest point and had about five miles of jungle to
+go through before we could get to their village.  We did our best to
+make it a surprise, but in some way they got wind of our coming and lay
+in ambush.  We were picking our way in single file when suddenly there
+came a rain of bullets and several of our men went down.  The rest of
+us took to cover and the fight was on.
+
+"The Moros you know are Mohammedans, and about as nifty fighters as you
+can find anywhere.  Like all men of their religion, they believe that
+any one who dies on the battlefield goes straight to Paradise, and that
+gives them an absolute contempt for death.  They were well armed too
+with Mauser rifles that they'd managed to get hold of somehow, but
+luckily for us they hadn't learned to handle them well and most of
+their shots went wild.  If their shooting had been as good as their
+hearts were stout, they might have wiped us out, as they outnumbered us
+two or three to one.
+
+"Has anybody got the makin's?" he inquired, as he stopped to roll a
+cigarette.
+
+"Give them to him, somebody," said Bart exasperatedly.
+
+"For the love of Mike don't keep him waiting!" ejaculated Frank.  "I
+want to hear how Fred got out of it."
+
+Fred, not a bit averse to the interest he had aroused, was
+tantalizingly slow in taking his time.
+
+"Keep your hair on," he drawled, as he struck a match.  "I got through
+all right, or I wouldn't be chinning to you now.
+
+"Well," he resumed after a preliminary puff, "we kept picking them off
+whenever a head showed itself until they found that we could outplay
+them at that game, and then they resorted to other tactics.  Throwing
+aside their guns and grasping their machettes--those murderous knives
+of theirs that will cut a man's head off with a single blow--they came
+charging down upon us.  We didn't propose to stand on the defensive,
+and after a vast volley that swept a lot of them away we fixed bayonets
+and rushed to meet them."
+
+The group that had by this time gathered about Fred drew a little
+closer.
+
+"It was touch and go for a few minutes," continued Fred, "but our
+weight and discipline told, and soon we were pushing them back.  Just
+then however I stumbled over a root and fell to the ground, striking my
+head and stunning myself.  At that same moment the Moros were
+reinforced and came back with a wild rush that by sheer weight of
+numbers forced our line back for twenty-five feet or more.
+
+"I was trying to get to my feet when four or five of the nearest Moros,
+brandishing their knives, swooped down upon me.  It would have been all
+over with me, if one of our fellows, a big fighting Irishman named
+Hennessy, hadn't come plunging through the crowd swinging his rifle
+round his head like a flail.  They went down like bullocks hit with an
+axe.  They simply couldn't get inside the circle made by that gun and
+by the time he had knocked down a half dozen or more, our boys had
+rallied and had the beggars on the run."
+
+"Phew, but that was a close shave!" ejaculated Frank.
+
+"Close is right," agreed Fred.  "I'd certainly have cashed in right
+then and there if it hadn't been for Hennessy.  I told him that he had
+saved my life and that I owed him more than I could ever repay, but he
+wouldn't have it so.  The joke of it was that I think he was really
+grateful to me for giving him a chance for such a lovely scrap.  He
+told me that he hadn't enjoyed himself so much since the last time he
+had gone to the fair at Tipperary."
+
+There was a general laugh.
+
+"If it hadn't been for him, you wouldn't have had your chance now to
+get a hack at the Huns," remarked Bart.
+
+"No," assented Fred, "and that would certainly have been hard luck.
+But to get back where we started from, I want to put it up to you
+fellows that what the Frenchman said was true.  We can't take this
+practice too seriously.  Especially bayonet practice.  We've had lots
+of proof that the Germans don't like cold steel.  They're brave enough,
+but the French and English put it all over them in bayonet work."
+
+"That's right," agreed Frank, "and it's up to us to show that Uncle
+Sam's boys can do the same."
+
+The hand grenade throwing was of special interest to the boys and was
+the one most readily mastered.  This was due chiefly to the fact that
+it had points in common with baseball.  Many of the boys were
+proficient in the great national game.
+
+The firm of Moore and Thomas had maintained its own nine, and in the
+season before they had carried off the championship of the commercial
+teams in Camport.  Frank had officiated in the pitcher's box and had an
+assortment of curves and drops together with great speed that had been
+the chief factors in the winning of the pennant.  Bart had "dug them
+out of the dirt" at first base.
+
+Billy Waldon, too, had been as quick as lightning in "winging them
+down" from short.
+
+So that their throwing arms were fully developed and they took up this
+new and grimmer game with the skill born of long practice.
+
+"This ought to be nuts for us when we get to the trenches," remarked
+Billy, as he cut loose with a grenade in practice that landed within
+two feet of the object aimed at.
+
+"It sure gives us a big advantage over the Germans," assented Frank.
+"Of course they're drilled in throwing, but by the time they've started
+in with it their muscles must seem strange to it.  We've been throwing
+a ball around ever since we were kids.  It's in the blood.  Our eyes
+and arms have learned to work together.  And then, too, a thing you've
+learned to do from the love of it must be better done than when it's
+forced on you."
+
+"Imagine a crack pitcher with a grenade in his hand and the Kaiser a
+hundred feet away," said Billy with a grin.
+
+"An A1 pitcher wouldn't do a thing to him!" chuckled one of the other
+recruits.
+
+"Would he put over a bean ball or a fadeaway, do you think?" asked Bart.
+
+"It would be a strike-out, whichever one he used," declared Frank.
+"The Kaiser would do a fadeaway."
+
+The bomb they used was the Mills bomb which had been adopted for
+general use in the British army.
+
+"Let's hope there'll be plenty of them, whatever else we're short of,"
+remarked Bart.
+
+"They're handy little things to have around when the Boches come over
+for a friendly call," observed another lad.
+
+"If we run short we can make some ourselves," declared Frank.  "They
+won't be quite so nifty as these Mills bombs, but they'll do the work."
+
+"Listen to Edison talking," chaffed Billy.
+
+"I'm not kidding," declared Frank.  "I got the tip from one of the
+Tommys who was wounded in the Ypres fighting and is over here on leave.
+Hustle around some of you chaps and get me an old tin can and I'll show
+you what the Tommy showed to me."
+
+"What kind of a can?" asked Billy.
+
+"Oh, any old kind," answered Frank.  "An old soup can, tomato can, any
+can that Eli hasn't eaten up already."
+
+Eli was the big goat that served as the mascot of the regiment.  He had
+an omnivorous appetite and ate anything from cigarette butts to
+washrags, and if anything was missing it was customary to charge it
+against Eli.  He was not only a billygoat but a scapegoat.
+
+A little search however brought to light an old can that Eli had
+spared, and the boys looked on with interest while Frank prepared his
+homemade bomb.
+
+"I'll roll up my sleeves, gentlemen, to show you that I have nothing
+concealed there," said Frank, in his best conjurer's style.  "Now watch
+me carefully and I'll try to instill some scientific knowledge in those
+thick noddles of yours."
+
+He took a handful of clay from the edge of the trench where they had
+been practising and lined the inside of the can with it.
+
+"Now for the dirty work," joked Billy.
+
+Frank withered him with a glance.
+
+"Get me a lot of junk," he commanded.
+
+"That's rather indefinite," suggested Bart.  "Junk shops are not a part
+of this regiment's equipment.  Uncle Sam's had so much on his mind that
+he hasn't got to them yet."
+
+"A handful of nails or bits of iron or cartridge shells will do,"
+returned Frank, putting a detonator and explosive in the can and
+tamping it down in the clay.  "Anything will do that will make Fritz
+see stars when it hits him."
+
+Bart volunteered a broken jack knife; one lad contributed a couple of
+metal buttons; others handed over nails.
+
+Frank arranged the miscellaneous collection in as compact a mass as
+possible, put in more clay and then put on the tin cover, into which he
+first punched a hole.  Through this hole the top of the fuse protruded.
+Then he wrapped wire around the can so that the top could not come off,
+and the bomb was ready.
+
+"There," he said, as he held his handiwork up for their inspection,
+"when that is sent over to the enemy trenches there will be something
+doing.  It isn't much in the beauty line but it will get there just the
+same."
+
+"Great head!" said Bart admiringly.
+
+"Not mine but the fellow's who first figured it out," said Frank.  "But
+it's a good thing to know, and you never can tell when it may come in
+mighty handy."
+
+"I hear we're going to be gassed to-morrow," remarked Bart, as they
+made their way to their quarters.
+
+Billy made a wry face.
+
+"That's one of the most hideous things the Huns have brought into this
+war," he said.  "I can imagine Satan chuckling when he heard of the gas
+attack."
+
+"I don't think he chuckled," said Frank bitterly.  "More likely he was
+jealous to have a German think of it before he did.  It isn't often
+that he lets anyone get ahead of him."
+
+"He'll have to step lively to keep ahead of the Huns," said Bart.
+"They say there's no torture equal to that suffered by a man who has
+been gassed."
+
+"And even if they don't die of it after days of agony, they might
+better have died," added another, "for it leaves them ruined for life."
+
+"Surgeons get hardened in carrying on their profession," commented
+Frank.  "They have to be or they couldn't keep their nerve.  But they
+say that even the surgeons broke down when they stood beside the beds
+on which the gas victims lay gasping for breath.  They had never seen
+such horrible anguish."
+
+"Well, there's no use expecting Germans to carry on war like a
+civilized nation," declared Frank.  "They've thrown all decency and
+humanity to the winds.  They've raised the flag of the skull and
+crossbones and want to make all the rest of the world walk the plank.
+They're pirates and barbarians, and there'll be no peace or security
+for mankind until they're punished for their crimes."
+
+"It's a tough job that's put up to us Allies," said Bart.  "A man's
+job.  But we'll put it through, no matter what the cost may be."
+
+"Right you are," ejaculated Frank fervently.  "It wasn't only Nathan
+Hale who wished that he had more than one life to give for his country.
+There are a million Nathan Hales among Uncle Sam's boys and millions
+more to come."
+
+As Bart had predicted, their squad was lined up the next day for a
+practical test in gas defense.  They had already had preliminary drills
+in adjusting the masks, which had to be slipped on in six seconds.  It
+took a long time before this stage of excellence could be reached, for
+some of the men were doubly slow, slow in thought and slow in action.
+The quicker ones had soon acquired the habit of adjusting the masks in
+the required time, and Frank and Bart could do it sometimes in five
+seconds.  But the drill went on unceasingly until all acted as one man,
+for a single second's delay in fending off the infernal attack might
+mean all the difference between life and death--and such a death!
+
+It was not a pretty sight, for the masks were hideous and the men
+looked like weird monsters from another planet.
+
+"If only our friends could see us now!" murmured Bart to Frank in an
+undertone.
+
+"They'd drop dead from fright," returned the latter.
+
+"Deep sea divers have nothing on us," chimed in a third lad.
+
+"You're insulting the divers," said Billy.  "If they went down looking
+like this, the sharks would throw a fit."
+
+At last the drill worked with clock-work precision, and the perspiring
+lieutenant wiped his brow and gave vent to a sigh of relief as he
+looked along the grotesque ranks.
+
+"I guess they're ready now," he said, turning to the sergeant.  "Take
+them down half a dozen at a time and let them get a sniff of the gas."
+
+"_Let_ them," murmured a lad.  "What a blessed privilege.  Anyone would
+think that he was giving us a furlough for good conduct."
+
+"Save your breath and come along," admonished Billy.  "You'll need all
+you've got in a little while."
+
+The squad was marched off to a little hut that stood in a distant
+corner of the camp.  It was a crude creation with a door and only one
+window.  Long before they got to it the boys could detect a faint acrid
+odor in the atmosphere.
+
+"Now," said the sergeant halting his men at a little distance, "you
+fellows break ranks and come along in single file."
+
+The single room of the hut had been filled with the same kind of gas
+that the Germans were using along the western front, but in greatly
+diluted form.
+
+"Take off your masks," commanded the sergeant, "and go along past that
+window one by one.  Make quick time too.  I want you to learn just what
+the gas smells like, so that you can detect it the minute it comes near
+you after you get to the trenches."
+
+The men obeyed orders, and, as they passed, each got a whiff of the gas
+that was escaping through a slight opening of the window.  There was a
+gasp, a cough, a wry face and a hurried scuttling by as each man went
+through the ordeal.
+
+It is needless to say that there was no disposition to linger.  Even
+the slowest man of the squad displayed unsuspected capacity for speed.
+
+"Look at Fatty Bates," chuckled Billy, alluding to the most ponderous
+member of the company.  "Talk about winged heels!  Mercury has nothing
+on him."
+
+"It certainly got a rise out of Fatty," grinned Bart.  "It's worth a
+dollar to see him jump.  Put a gas cloud after him and I'll bet he'd do
+a hundred yards in ten seconds flat."
+
+"You'll jump too when your turn comes," prophesied Frank.  "You'll
+think the lid has been taken off of the infernal regions."
+
+The prophecy was verified, for though there was no danger, since the
+gas had been vastly diluted, yet the odor was so vile and the death it
+suggested was so horrible that they could not get away from it quickly
+enough.
+
+"It's like passing close to a rattlesnake whose fangs have been drawn,"
+commented Frank.  "You might know that he couldn't kill you, but if he
+struck at you you'd jump instinctively, just because he was a
+rattlesnake."
+
+"Some perfume that," remarked Billy with an expression of dire disgust.
+
+"New-mown hay--I don't think," growled Bart, sneezing as though he
+would shake his head loose from his shoulders.  "I got a bigger dose
+than the rest of you slackers," he added with an air of superior virtue.
+
+"Martyr to duty," mocked Frank.  "But we're not through yet, fellows.
+The worst is yet to come."
+
+"Nothing can be worse," grumbled Fatty Bates, with profound conviction.
+
+"Oh, yes, it can," said Billy, assuming the role of Job's comforter.
+"We've got to go inside that Chamber of Horrors and stay there five
+minutes by the clock."
+
+"Will we come out on our feet or be carried out?" asked Fatty Bates
+with a worried expression.
+
+"You'll never be carried out, Fatty," chaffed Billy.  "It would take
+the whole regiment to do that.  It'll be a crane and derrick for you
+sure."
+
+"We'll put a torpedo under him and blow him through the roof," added
+Bart.
+
+"Now men," said the sergeant, "put on your masks and go inside, one
+after the other.  There's no danger if you've learned to put them on
+perfectly.  But if there's any sloppy work, the fellow that's careless
+will find it out soon enough, and he'll get all that's coming to him."
+
+"Not much nourishment in that," muttered Billy under his breath.
+"Suppose the mask's defective, got a hole in it or something like that."
+
+"If it is, it's better to find it out now than when we're actually in
+the trenches," answered Frank.  "I suppose that's the real reason for
+this test.  Here's hoping that no shoddy contractor had put one over on
+the government."
+
+They filed into the grim little room after having adjusted their masks
+with especial care and stood crowded closely together looking in their
+ghostly attire like so many spectres.
+
+It was a grisly five minutes that seemed more like an hour to each one
+of them.  The dead silence added to the discomfort of the occasion.
+Death seemed to be all around them, reaching out to them with its
+skeleton fingers.  They were in the "valley of the shadow," and it
+sobered them.
+
+It was an immense relief when the knock of the sergeant on the door
+summoned them forth and the test was over.  And there was great
+satisfaction when it was learned that all the masks had held and shown
+that they could be relied on.
+
+Once out in the clean, sweet air and under the blue sky that never
+before had seemed so beautiful, the boys tore off their masks in a
+hurry.
+
+"Now I feel like a respectable member of society and not like one of
+the Ku Klux Klan!" exclaimed Bart, as he looked around on the flushed
+bronzed faces of his comrades.  "My, but it's good to be out of this
+hideous rig.  I'd like to throw it into the river," he added digging
+his fingers viciously into the unoffending mask.
+
+"You'll be glad enough to have it some day before long," prophesied
+Frank.  "Then you'll count it the best friend you have."
+
+"Isn't it pretty nearly time for mess?" asked Fatty Bates wistfully.
+
+"Not yet, little one," remarked Billy.  "The sergeant's got something
+else up his sleeve, or I miss my guess."
+
+A groan went up from Fatty, which was quickly suppressed when the
+sergeant looked sternly at him.
+
+"Form in single file, men," commanded the sergeant, "and make your way
+through the trench.  Bend over as you go, for you're supposed to be on
+the enemy front, and not a head must show to be a mark for snipers."
+
+They did as they were told, and after they had reached a designated
+portion of the shallow trench they were halted by their leader.
+
+"You're going to be gassed right and proper now," he said.  "Some gas
+shells are going to be thrown over toward you and it's up to you when
+you see them coming to get those masks on mighty quick."
+
+Crouching low and on the alert, the men waited until a gas shell with a
+hiss and a scream came hurtling in their direction and broke a hundred
+feet in front of the trench.  A cloud of gas came rolling toward them.
+On went their masks in the twinkling of an eye, and the vapor passed
+over them harmlessly.
+
+Several times this was repeated until the keen eye of the sergeant was
+satisfied with the dexterity shown by the squad.  And there was a
+general sigh of relief when he summoned them out of the trench and
+announced that drill was over for the morning.
+
+"Phew, but that was some strenuous work," remarked Frank, as holding
+their masks in their hands the men strolled back in groups of twos and
+threes toward their quarters.
+
+"I feel as though I had been drawn through a knothole," said Fatty
+Bates.
+
+The thought of Fatty being drawn through a knothole was so ludicrous
+that it provoked a general roar.
+
+"I guess we all feel pretty well used up," said Bart when the merriment
+had subsided, "but all the same it's things like this that are going to
+help us lick the Huns."
+
+And so the days passed in learning the grim lessons of war, and the
+shadows, lengthening into evening, brought supper, perhaps some special
+musical entertainment, a vaudeville show, or moving pictures, sometimes
+only bonfires with smoking, laughing, joking crowds about them.  The
+boys enjoyed these latter evenings most when the funny events of the
+day could be passed in review and enjoyed by them all.
+
+Then, promptly at nine the bugle called for "all lights out," and the
+young soldiers, early as was the hour, obeyed it willingly.  The
+strenuous days in the open air made the narrow cots in the long
+barracks particularly appealing.
+
+"Did you hear that joke Jameson was telling about the Yankee soldier?"
+Bart asked one night, when all the rest were either asleep or on the
+way.
+
+"No," said Frank, sleepily.  "What was it?"
+
+"It seems a guard challenged him," chuckled Bart, "with the regular,
+'Who goes there?' and he answered, 'Aw, you wouldn't know if I told
+you.  I've only been here a couple o' days'."
+
+"That's all very well here," yawned Frank.  "But it wouldn't go in 'No
+Man's Land'!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+NICK RABIG TURNS UP
+
+"What is that?  Shrapnel?" asked Bart, one morning, as he opened his
+eyes after the reveille and heard the rain beating a tremendous tattoo
+on the roof.
+
+"Hardly as bad as that," laughed Frank.  "If it were, I bet you'd be
+out of that cot more quickly than you're doing it now.  But it sure is
+coming down."
+
+"So much the better," said Bart, as he jumped out and hastily began to
+dress.  "That'll cut out the drill to-day and I'll have time to answer
+some of my letters and darn my socks."
+
+But such roseate dreams were quickly dispelled.  The storm increased in
+violence after breakfast and the wind blew great guns.
+
+The Y.M.C.A. building was being erected for the use of that
+organization but was not yet completed.  In the meantime, the
+Association had put up for temporary use a canvas tent, and as the
+storm increased in fury the flimsy structure gave every evidence of
+taking to itself wings and flying away.
+
+The captain ordered a detail of men to go out and surround the tent and
+hold the tent pins down by main force if necessary.
+
+There was nothing alluring about the prospect, for it meant a thorough
+drenching for the entire detail.
+
+But the boys had already learned the first great rule of military
+life--to obey instantly any command given by a superior officer.
+
+So Frank and Bart, who happened to be among those chosen for the work,
+jumped at the word.  But they also had the soldiers' immemorial
+privilege of grumbling among themselves, and Bart chose to exercise it
+as they made their way in the teeth of the storm to the threatened tent.
+
+"Just our luck to catch the captain's eye," he muttered.
+
+"Stop your grumbling," adjured Frank.  "Think how much worse it would
+be if we were plowing through the mud in No Man's Land.  Let's make a
+lark of it."
+
+"We'll be up among the larks all right," returned Bart, "if this thing
+ever gets away from the tent pins."  They laid hold of the straining
+ropes and hung on for dear life.  "An aviator would have nothing on us."
+
+It was hard work while it lasted and their sturdy muscles were put to
+the test, but they had the satisfaction of keeping the tent in its
+place and after a while the storm subsided and the danger was over.
+
+"Isn't it about time for those drafted men to get down here?" asked
+Frank, as they were on their way back to the barracks.
+
+"I heard yesterday from Billy Waldon," returned Bart, "that two or
+three regiments were expected to-day.  Up to now all the fellows here
+have been volunteers.  I'm curious to see how the drafted men will take
+to the life."
+
+"I suppose some of them will be sore at having had to come whether they
+wanted to or not," replied Frank.  "Still there will be lots of good
+fighting material in them.  I've heard Peterson say that the drafted
+men in the Union Army fought as well as the volunteers.  They'll all be
+good Americans when they face the Huns."
+
+Even as they spoke they heard the far-off music of a band and saw the
+men who were off duty hurrying toward the great gate of the camp.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if some of them were coming now," remarked Frank.
+"Let's leg it to the gate and see them come in."
+
+They reached a favorable position just as the first of the advancing
+troops entered the camp.  The boys studied them critically and in a
+somewhat patronizing spirit, for they already felt like veterans and
+were inclined to look down a little upon the "rookies."
+
+There was, of course, a good deal to criticize about the newcomers.
+Most of them, up to a few days before, had never touched a gun in their
+lives, many of them were in civilian clothes, and although they tried
+to keep in line and step briskly to the music of the band, their
+marching was ragged.
+
+Some of them, used to a sedentary life, were winded, even by that short
+hike of three miles to the camp.  They were raw material in the fullest
+sense of the word.  But the officers who led them and the men who
+watched them, knew perfectly well what wonders could be wrought in that
+outfit by a few weeks or months of training.
+
+The regiment broke ranks as soon as they were fairly within the
+precincts of the camp.
+
+"Look there!" cried Frank suddenly, as his eyes fell upon one of the
+near recruits.  "If that isn't Tom Bradford, I'll eat my hat."
+
+"Sure thing!" shouted Bart, as he looked in the direction Frank had
+indicated.  "Hi there, Tom!" he yelled, and they both made a break for
+the place where Tom was standing.
+
+In a moment they each had one of his hands and were shaking it as
+though they would wrench it off.
+
+"Good old scout!" ejaculated Frank.  "How in the name of all that's
+lucky did you get here?"
+
+"Oh, I'm like a postage stamp?" grinned Tom, delightedly.  "I stick
+until I get there."
+
+"But I thought they wouldn't take you when you tried to enlist," said
+Frank, a little bewildered.
+
+"Can you beat it?" returned Tom.  "When I wanted to enlist they
+wouldn't have me.  Then when I was moping along and raving against fate
+I was called up in the draft.  The doctors there passed me without
+letting out a peep.  Say, maybe I wasn't tickled to get in on any
+terms.  It makes me sore though, to think I can't be in the old
+Thirty-seventh along with the rest of you fellows."
+
+"Never mind," said Frank.  "The main thing is, you're here.  We'll be
+in the same camp and in the same division and we'll be able to see a
+lot of each other."
+
+"I'm not the only Camport fellow that's here," chuckled Tom.
+
+"Is that so?" said Frank with interest.  "Who is it?"
+
+"Give you three guesses," grinned Tom.
+
+"Hal Chase!"
+
+"Wrong," said Tom.
+
+"Will Baxter!"
+
+"Come again."
+
+"Dick Ormsby!"
+
+"You're all off," replied Tom.  "But you'd never guess in a thousand
+years and so I'll put you out of your misery.  It's Nick Rabig."
+
+"Nick Rabig!" they yelled, in unison.
+
+"Cross my heart and hope to die," laughed Tom, enjoying the amazement
+of his comrades.
+
+"Nick Rabig, in a Yankee uniform!" chortled Frank.
+
+"And going to fight the Huns!" crowed Bart.  "Say, isn't it rich?"
+
+"How does he feel about it," asked Frank, surprise and glee giving way
+to curiosity.
+
+"Like a bear with a sore head," responded Tom.  "Of course he doesn't
+dare to say much, but what he's thinking isn't fit for publication!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+FOR FRANCE
+
+The young volunteers looked about for the unwilling conscript and soon
+caught sight of him, standing moodily apart from the others and with a
+scowl upon his face as black as a thundercloud.
+
+"Papa's little sunshine," chuckled Frank.
+
+"Same old cheery disposition," grinned Bart.  "Say, if he looked at
+milk, he'd turn it sour."
+
+"I suppose we ought to go over and speak to him," said Frank,
+thoughtfully.  "He must feel like a cat in a strange garret."
+
+"Maybe you're right," said Bart, doubtfully.  "I'm willing to try
+anything once."
+
+They strolled over to the place where Nick Rabig was standing and
+saluted him pleasantly.
+
+"Hello, Rabig!" cried Frank.  "How do you like your first look at our
+camp?"
+
+"If it was the last look I'd like it better," snarled Rabig, his sullen
+resentment flaring forth at this unexpected sight of his old enemy.
+
+"You'll change your mind, maybe, when you've had a chance to look
+around some," said Bart, still trying to be agreeable, though the
+strain was telling on him.
+
+"Yes," added Frank, "if there's anything we can do for you, let us
+know."
+
+"The only thing you can do for me," said Rabig, his brows drawing
+together in a still blacker scowl, "is to get out of my sight and stay
+out."
+
+"Oh, so that's all, is it?" said Frank with a careless laugh as they
+turned away.  "Well, that's the easiest thing we ever had to do; eh,
+fellows?"
+
+"You said it," they agreed as they walked on, leaving Rabig to glare
+after them with helpless hatred in his eyes.
+
+After that, though they remained in camp several weeks, the boys saw
+little of Nick Rabig and were just as well satisfied.  Friction was not
+in their line.  They preferred the easy, happy comradeship that existed
+among nine-tenths of the fellows.
+
+"I should think," said Bart, after a day of particularly hard but
+fruitful practice, "that we were almost ready to meet the Germans."
+
+"Well, I don't know about that," returned Frank.  "But I shouldn't
+wonder if we'd soon be sent over to France to finish our training
+behind the lines."
+
+"Right you are," said Billy Waldon, strolling tip with Tom.  "I
+overheard a couple of officers talking about the immediate plans for
+the regiment, and they seemed to think that we might expect orders
+almost any time to go to a camp nearer the sea."
+
+"And from there I suppose we go across," said Tom.
+
+"I hope that's right!" cried Frank, eagerly.  "I'm just spoiling to get
+into action."
+
+"All the fellows feel that way," said Bart.
+
+"All but Rabig," put in Tom with a grin.
+
+One day, the longed-for orders came and the camp with its thirty
+thousand men hummed with excitement and activity.  About ten o'clock
+one bright sunshiny morning the regiment marched out of the gates of
+Camp Boone, to the martial music of its band, no longer a collection of
+raw recruits but a company of trained, vigorous young soldiers, ready
+and fit for any work their country might apportion them.
+
+Two days and two nights they spent on the train and on the morning of
+the third day started the march to the camp which was to be their short
+abiding place.
+
+"Say, fellows, you can smell the ocean!" cried Frank, drawing in deep
+breaths of the invigorating, salt-laden air.  "Say, I'm not a bit
+anxious to get on it!"
+
+"You'll be lucky," responded Bart, who was hungry and therefore not as
+cheerful as was his wont, "if you don't find yourself under it before
+you get through.  They say those submarines are doing pretty slick
+work."
+
+"They may be doing now," said Frank whose high spirits refused to be
+dampened even by hunger, "but some day they're going to get done!  You
+just let that sink home, Bart, my boy."
+
+"I'd rather let some good juicy beefsteak sink home, just now,"
+grumbled Bart, rebelliously.  "If I have to feel like this much, I
+won't mind being sunk!"
+
+An hour later, however, Bart's spirits had soared to ecstatic heights.
+His voracious appetite had been satisfied--and with beefsteak.
+
+One night, less than a week later, a startling thing happened.  The
+boys had turned in as usual sharp at nine o'clock, and were in the deep
+sleep of exhausted youth when they were suddenly awakened by the
+imperative notes of a bugle.
+
+"Wh-what's that?" cried Frank, sitting up on his cot and straining his
+eyes through the darkness.  "It's reveille--but it's dark as pitch."
+
+"It c-can't be morning," stuttered Bart, while a babel of questions and
+answers arose all about them.  "Gee, isn't six o'clock bad enough
+without getting routed out at--what time is it, Frank--my watch has
+gone on a strike."
+
+"Just two o'clock," returned Frank, consulting his radio watch, while
+all about him was noise and confusion as the boys hastily got into
+their things.  "I know what it is," he added, shouting to make himself
+heard above the din.  "The time's come to sail and they didn't give us
+any warning for fear the news would get out!  Bart, here's adventure
+for you!"
+
+"Sure, I'll begin to enjoy it too," grumbled Bart, "when I get my eyes
+open."
+
+The boys never forgot that ghostly march to the great transport which
+was to bear them across to the scene of conflict.  No sound was heard,
+save the steady tramp, tramp of their feet, the occasional hoot of an
+owl far off in the woodland, and the eerie sighing of the wind among
+the trees.
+
+When at last, after several miles of this weird marching, the huge,
+shadowy bulk of a ship rose before them, their hearts beat madly and
+they thrilled with a wild exultation.
+
+Silently they marched on board.  Then, the whispered commands of
+officers to men, the throbbing of the screws, the soft gliding of the
+great ship from the pier--and they were off!
+
+"For France," murmured Frank, his eyes gleaming in the starlight.  "For
+France and victory!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE LURKING PERIL
+
+The shipping of the men had been carried through so smoothly and
+swiftly, and everything had moved with such clockwork precision, that
+before the sun fairly rose the giant steamer was out of sight of land.
+And any spy who might have been lurking at any point on the coast would
+have had his trouble for his pains.
+
+The night had been a broken one, but the army boys were so excited that
+no one cared for the loss of sleep.  Here at last was action.  Now they
+were fairly launched on the great adventure.  Every mile that the great
+ship traversed was bringing them nearer to the scene of actual
+fighting, the roar of the cannon, the shriek of shells, the hand to
+hand conflict with the enemy.
+
+"It must make the Huns sore," laughed Frank, "to think that one of
+their own great ships is carrying us over the ocean to fight the men
+who built it."
+
+"Sort of poetic justice, eh?" grinned Billy Waldon.
+
+"They felt they had the goods on us when they smashed the machinery,"
+said Bart.  "They figured it would take at least a year before we could
+get the ships in shape again, and yet its only five months since they
+scrapped the engines and here they're pounding along as good as new."
+
+"It's not the first mistake the Kaiser's made," agreed Frank.  "What
+was it that fellow Von Papen called us?--idiotic Yankees."
+
+"We weren't so idiotic after all, that we didn't get on to his game and
+send him and his pals packing," said Tom.
+
+"There goes the call for breakfast," cried Billy, as the bugle rang out
+its welcome summons.  "This sea view is great but we'll have plenty of
+time to enjoy that.  Me for the mess and we'll have to get in line
+quick or with this crowd we won't have a Chinaman's chance."
+
+"Billy wants to eat while he can," grinned Bart, as they plunged along
+in his wake.  "He's afraid he'll be seasick, later on."
+
+"Not on your life," flung back Billy.  "You can't get seasick on this
+ship.  She's so big she rides half a dozen waves at once and she's as
+steady as a church."
+
+Although the great ship was unchanged as regards the external
+appearance, a complete transformation had been effected inside.  When
+it had first been built, it had been fitted out and decorated with
+princely magnificence but now all the costly and beautiful fittings had
+been ruthlessly torn out.  It was like a great, hollow cavern from
+stern to stern.  Everything had been sacrificed to the need for space.
+Cots and hammocks by the thousands took up every available inch that
+was not absolutely needed for other purposes.
+
+It was a gigantic, floating hotel and apart from the crew, who
+themselves ran into the hundreds, it carried many thousands of Uncle
+Sam's fighting men.
+
+"A U-boat would certainly make a ten-strike if it sent a torpedo into
+this craft," remarked Frank, as, after breakfast, the three friends
+secured a point of vantage on the upper deck.
+
+"He'd get the iron cross from the Kaiser, sure enough," replied Billy.
+"It's so big a target that he could hardly miss it if he took a pot
+shot at it."
+
+"I don't think there's much danger," said Frank, as he glanced at the
+guns with their trained crews that guarded the liner fore and aft.  "If
+a U-boat attacked us she'd be the more likely of the two to get sunk.
+These guns out-range anything that a submarine carries."
+
+"To say nothing of the convoys," put in Bart.  "It's all right to
+attack an unarmed merchant ship but it's a different thing when United
+States destroyers are on the job."
+
+"Where are they?" said Billy, looking about over the broad expanse
+which showed no trace of any other vessel.
+
+"They'll meet us when we get further out," said Frank.  "There will be
+no danger for a day or two yet.  The U-boats are hugging the English
+coast pretty tight."
+
+"I don't think we ought to reckon too much on that," said Billy.  "You
+know, a U-boat did cross the ocean a year or so ago and sank five ships
+right off Nantucket.  That's coming too close home for comfort."
+
+"One swallow doesn't make a summer," replied Frank.  "At that time we
+were neutral and after the U-boat once slipped past the British fleet
+there was nothing to stop it before it got to the American coast.  But
+you bet it would be no cinch to do it now, with the United States navy
+on the job."
+
+The next two days were fair and the sea smooth.  The great liner reeled
+off the miles with tremendous speed.  As Billy had prophesied, the ship
+was so steady that there was very little sea-sickness and there was so
+much to be seen and done under these novel conditions that every waking
+hour was filled with interest.
+
+Two days later they picked up their convoy and all felt a very
+comforting sense of security in the presence of the destroyers with
+their business-like air and wicked looking guns.
+
+They kept pace with the liner, within easy reaching distance,
+occasionally exchanging signals, and keeping sleepless watch day and
+night over the huge transport.
+
+"The finest navy in the world!" cried Frank, with enthusiasm, as his
+kindling eyes rested on these "bulldogs of the sea."  "That's one
+branch of the service where Uncle Sam has never fallen down.  Man for
+man, gun for gun, and ship for ship, there's nothing in the world can
+beat them.  Just watch them clean out that U-boat nest when they once
+get over there in force."
+
+"They'll do to them what Decatur did to the Barbary pirates years ago,"
+said Bart.  "Every other nation was paying tribute to them, but that
+idea didn't make a hit with us and we went in and wiped them off the
+face of the earth--or rather the face of the water.  And what we did
+once, we can do again."
+
+Frank's eyes had been idly roaming over the sea while they were
+talking, but suddenly his gaze became fixed and he started to his feet.
+
+"Did you see that, fellows?" he demanded, sharply.
+
+"Where?" asked Billy
+
+"I didn't see anything," said Bart.
+
+"It looked like a flash of light on the water," explained Frank.
+"There it is again.  Great Scott, it's a periscope!"
+
+Almost as he spoke, the forward guns on the liner roared their
+challenge, followed by the deeper bass of the guns from the nearest
+destroyer.
+
+In an instant there was great excitement, though without the slightest
+trace of panic.  The ship swung around in response to a bell from the
+bridge and began to zigzag in a bewildering fashion.
+
+Then a great white furrow appeared in the sea and along that whitening
+lane came hissing a monster torpedo.  Nearer and nearer it came with
+lightning speed straight toward the vessel.
+
+Had the liner kept its course the torpedo would have struck it
+amidships.  As it was, it passed just back of the stern, missing it by
+not more than a dozen feet.
+
+The destroyers came racing like mad toward the spot from which the
+torpedo had been launched.  No trace of the submarine was visible but
+the destroyers circled round and round the spot, dropping their deadly
+depth bombs in the hope of striking their unseen foe.
+
+Thousands of pairs of eyes watched for the result, while in their
+excitement their owners almost forgot to breathe.
+
+Minutes passed and then a mighty cheer went up.  For on the waters
+appeared a gradually widening smudge of oil on which floated bits of
+wreckage that told their own story.
+
+The U-boat had fired its last torpedo.  One of the depth bombs had
+sought it out in its invisible lair, battered in its sides, wrenched
+open its seams and sent its pirate crew to their last account.  For
+that one boat, at least, the Kaiser's admirals would watch in vain.
+
+"We got it!" yelled Billy Waldon exultingly.
+
+"They can't always get away with it!" cried Bart, jubilantly.
+
+"What did I tell you about our navy?" crowed Frank.  "They can't put
+one over on Uncle Sam!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE WAR-SWEPT LAND
+
+"You've got to hand it to that fellow, though," said Billy.  "He had
+his nerve right with him to try to cop out a transport right under the
+nose of a convoy."
+
+"Yes," agreed Bart.  "Although, after all, it may simply have been a
+chance meeting.  The captain of the U-boat might have been as surprised
+as we were when he came up to breathe and found himself so close to us.
+But being there it was too good a chance to miss and he let fly."
+
+"Maybe there wouldn't have been a high old time in Berlin if the
+torpedo had reached its mark," said Frank.  "Think of being able to
+boast that they'd sunk thousands of Uncle Sam's troops!  They'd have
+hung out the flags and rung the bells and given the school children a
+holiday."
+
+"Well, a miss is as good as a mile," returned Billy.  "It's a heap more
+comfortable sitting here and talking about it, than it would be to be
+in the water or rowing about in small boats while the submarine shelled
+us."
+
+"Well, that particular submarine will never do any more shelling," said
+Bart.  "It's all over with them now.  It must be a fearful thing to die
+the way those fellows did, like rats in a trap.  It's no wonder that
+the Kaiser finds it hard to get men to man his U-boats."
+
+"It is pretty rough on them when luck goes against them," admitted
+Frank.  "But if those fellows played the game fairly I'd feel sorrier
+than I do.  Don't forget, that if they saw us struggling in the water
+they'd be standing on the deck of the submarine, if there were no
+destroyer about, grinning and mocking at us.  And if women and children
+were drowning, it would make no difference to them."
+
+"Right you are," declared Billy.  "Do you remember what that U-boat did
+that sank the _Belgian Prince_?  Smashed the small boats, threw away
+the oars, and took those of the crew who were left on top of the
+submarine."
+
+"Yes," said Bart.  "Then the Germans made everything tight and went
+below, leaving their prisoners on the deck.  The U-boat sailed along
+the surface for a few hours and then slowly sank leaving their captives
+to drown.  If that wasn't brutal, cold-blooded murder, there never was
+any in the history of the world."
+
+"I hope this submarine was the one that did the trick," said Frank.
+"Perhaps drowning didn't seem such a rich joke to them when their turn
+came."
+
+From that time on, the vigilance aboard ship was redoubled, for
+although the general opinion was that it was only a chance meeting, no
+one knew but what this U-boat was simply one of a fleet whose
+companions might look for better luck where their comrade had failed.
+
+But nothing more was seen of the undersea terror until they were
+approaching the French coast and then the boys were witnesses of an
+exciting game that held them breathless.
+
+"Look at that speck up there in the sky," exclaimed Frank.
+
+"Biggest bird I ever saw," remarked Billy.
+
+"That's no bird," declared Bart, after a prolonged inspection through a
+pair of glasses that he produced from his kit.  "That's an aeroplane."
+
+"An aeroplane!" exclaimed Billy.  "So far away from shore as this?
+You're dreaming."
+
+"You can see for yourselves," replied Bart, as he handed the glasses
+around.  "Take a squint at it and you'll see that that bird never wore
+feathers."
+
+"It must be a seaplane," announced Frank.  "It's been launched from the
+deck of some vessel and now it's hovering up there like a hawk, looking
+for submarines.  It's a funny thing, but they say that those seaplane
+pilots can look right down through the water and see a submarine when
+it can't be seen from the deck of a ship."
+
+"What's the dope?" asked Billy, with great interest.  "Suppose he does
+spot one, what good does it do?"
+
+"He's got a wireless equipment," explained Frank, "and he sends out
+signals to trawlers and destroyers.  They come on the jump and the
+seaplane tells them just where the submarine is lying."
+
+"By jiminy, I think he sees one now!" exclaimed Tom Bradford, who had
+just come up.  "See that smudge of smoke over there?  That means a
+steamer's coming and there's another."
+
+As though by magic one boat after another hove in sight until there
+were four, coming from as many points in the compass and heading toward
+that point in the sea over which the seaplane hovered.
+
+The boys were on edge with excitement at the prospect of being in at
+the death and as the liner was rapidly approaching the scene of action,
+they had a clear view of what followed.
+
+Guided evidently by signals from the seaplane, two of the trawlers
+stretched a long chain between them and advanced slowly toward the
+other two who, with a similar chain approached from the other direction.
+
+"What do you suppose they're trying to do?" asked Billy, curiously.
+
+"The idea is, to get those chains under the submarine," explained
+Frank.  "After they've done that, they'll crisscross them from above.
+If they once succeed in doing it the sub is done for.  He's got to come
+up and surrender or else they'll slip him a depth bomb and blow him to
+flinders."
+
+Deftly and quickly the work went on under the direction of the skilled
+veterans who held command of the trawlers.  Then they waited for the
+submarine to come up.
+
+But it did not come.  Instead, it released a group of mines on the
+chance of wrecking one or more of its captors.  But they were on the
+lookout for just such a contingency and fended off these "floating
+deaths," waiting till they had finished their more important work
+before rendering them harmless.
+
+Minutes passed and still the U-boat lay like a sullen monster, trapped
+but not subdued.
+
+Then it was the trawlers' turn to take the offensive.  Two depth bombs
+were placed on the taut chains and slid down through the waters to the
+hull of the doomed submarine.
+
+There was a muffled boom, a geyser-like rush of water, and then the
+telltale oil that came to the surface showed that all was over.  One
+more of the assassins of the sea had paid the score it owed to an
+outraged world!
+
+"And that's the Kaiser's weapon that was going to bring England to her
+knees!" ejaculated Tom.
+
+"The Allies are getting the best of them," declared Frank.  "It looked
+at one time as though Germany were going to put it over.  But we're
+sinking them now just as fast as they can be built and when America
+gets fairly to work we'll sink them still faster."
+
+"Just wait till Edison gets on the job.  He'll find something that will
+finish the U-boats in jig time.  He'll make them look like thirty
+cents," declared Tom.
+
+A little later they caught their first sight of France.  Only a blur on
+the horizon at first, it grew steadily larger, and the bow of the boat
+was packed with the eager young soldiers, straining for a sight of the
+war-swept land that had suffered so much and done so much in the fight
+for liberty and democracy.
+
+Here they were to fight, here they were to suffer, here they were to
+carry their country's flag to a glorious victory!
+
+Frank breathed hard as the land came closer, for to him France had a
+greater significance than even to the others.  It was his mother's land
+and for that reason doubly dear.
+
+As the great vessel followed by others drew near the port, it was seen
+that the wharves and shores were black with people.  News had been
+wirelessed of their coming, and the city had gone wild with joy at this
+visible token of help from the great sister republic across the sea.
+
+Bells were ringing, whistles blowing, cannon booming.  Flags were flung
+out from all the buildings and the whole city was in holiday garb to
+welcome Uncle Sam's army boys to France!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+WITHIN THE SOUND OF GUNS
+
+"Here at last!" cried Frank in wild jubilation, as the transport was
+made fast to the wharf.  "Pinch me, fellows, to make sure I'm not
+dreaming."
+
+"It's real, sure enough!" exulted Bart.
+
+"Now we'll see action!" exclaimed Billy.
+
+"And get a chance at Fritz and Heinie!" added Tom.  "I'm aching to get
+a hack at them."
+
+Frank did not answer to this.  Now they had arrived in France his mind
+had drifted back to his mother and what she had said about the property
+she had inherited.  Would they ever be able to claim his grandfather's
+estate?
+
+If the army boys could have had their way, they would have leaped
+forthwith from the deck to the dock.  They were wild to feel the soil
+of the gallant country beneath their feet.  But discipline had to be
+observed and several hours elapsed before the troops were ready to
+leave the ship.
+
+Then at last they poured over the gangplank, line after line, wave
+after wave, in what seemed to the delighted multitude of watchers an
+almost endless procession.
+
+They formed in line and after a formal exchange of greetings between
+their commanders and the city authorities, the troops swung into the
+streets with the bands playing alternately, the "Star Spangled Banner"
+and the "Marseillaise."
+
+Such cheers as greeted them, such tears, such pelting of flowers, such
+waving of flags as the stalwart young Americans marched through streets
+that were packed to the curb with joyous, shouting, frenzied natives!
+
+It was a royal greeting that not one of the boys could ever forget.
+
+They reached the great barracks that had been assigned to them by the
+French Government for a temporary halting place before they should go
+to a place in the interior right behind the fighting lines.
+
+There was plenty of room, for the barracks were empty now, every son of
+France of fighting age that could be spared, being at the front.
+
+"They sure seemed glad to see us," grinned Frank, as, after the march,
+the regiment broke ranks and the men went to their quarters.
+
+"I don't wonder," replied Bart.  "I suppose America felt the same way a
+hundred years ago when Lafayette and his comrades went over there."
+
+"Gee, it seems strange to speak of America as being over there," said
+Tom, a little soberly.
+
+"Not getting homesick, are you, Tom?" questioned Billy, with a smile.
+
+"I have an idea I will," Tom answered with a grin, "when I have time to
+think about it.  But it would make me sicker still," he added stoutly,
+"to go back before we'd licked the Huns."
+
+"Right-o!" cried Billy.  "When I go back I want to take a lot of German
+helmets along to give to some girls I know."
+
+"Some girls," chaffed Bart.  "You talk like a Mormon, Billy."
+
+The next few days were busy and delightful ones for the boys.  The
+townspeople opened their hearts and homes to them, and they were
+feasted and entertained to their heart's content.  Everything was so
+new and strange to them that they were constantly stumbling upon
+surprises.
+
+The language, to be sure, offered some obstacles.  The boys had been
+taught some of the most necessary French phrases while in their
+training camp, and these along with some language primers they carried,
+sufficed for their more simple needs.  But their vocabulary was limited
+and their accent was a fearful and wonderful thing, though their hosts
+were too polite to laugh at them.
+
+Frank had some advantage over the others because his mother, being a
+French woman, had taught him her native tongue, and it was a great
+comfort to the rest of the Camport boys to have Frank along with them
+as interpreter when they themselves were stumped--which, it must be
+confessed, was often!
+
+Tom especially, who had no gift for languages was usually in hot water.
+His struggles with the language were frantic, not to say pathetic.
+
+"You're game, old scout," chaffed Billy, after Tom had wrestled in vain
+with the pronunciation of the French word for soup.  "But why in
+thunder did you make that waiter crazy by asking for bullion?  Any one
+would think you were trying to cop off the United States mint."
+
+"Well, what should I say?" Tom defended himself stoutly, as he thumbed
+over his phrase book.  "There it is, plain as day," he added,
+triumphantly--"b-o-u-i-l-l-o-n.  If that isn't bullion, what is it?"
+
+"You're all wrong, you're all wrong," said Bart condescendingly.  "It's
+_bwe-yone_, just like that."
+
+Tom tried it once or twice desperately and then gave it up.
+
+"I'd have to have a cold in my head to talk that way," he protested,
+pocketing the book in disgust.  "I'm not going to try any more.  The
+more I try the worse I get.  The next time, I'm going to ask for soup,
+plain, old fashioned American soup.  S-o-u-p.  Get that?  Then the
+waiter can do the guessing!"
+
+"Yes, and then he'll serve you spaghetti," laughed Frank.
+
+"So much the better," grinned Tom.  "Let him go through the whole
+shooting match.  Sooner or later he'll come to soup and when he does
+I'll be there."
+
+"And you intend to eat right through the menu?" queried Billy
+admiringly.
+
+"The which?" asked Tom.  "Oh, you mean the bill of fare.  Sure thing.
+I don't care whether it's soup to nuts or nuts to soup, I'll catch it
+coming and going."
+
+"And you're the fellow they wouldn't let enlist on account of his
+teeth," moaned Billy, with a doleful shake of his head.
+
+"They didn't know me," grinned Tom.
+
+The army boys spent nearly a week in the barracks to get rid of their
+"sea legs," and then the order came to go to the new camp, right behind
+the lines that had been assigned to them.
+
+It was too far for a hike and the railroads were taxed to their
+capacity in taking supplies to the forces at the front.  But the
+problem was solved by a multitude of gigantic motor trucks, lorries, in
+which two score of men could find accommodation.
+
+They were high-powered machines capable of tremendous speed and they
+rushed over the fine French highways like so many express trains.
+
+"This is the thing that saved Paris," remarked Frank.  "If Gallieni
+hadn't packed all his troops and rushed them up as reinforcements,
+France would have lost the battle of the Marne."
+
+"They're great goers all right," commented Bart.  "We're sure breaking
+the speed laws.  But I don't see any traffic cops stopping us."
+
+"They'd only cheer us on," grinned Tom.  "We can't get to the battle
+lines too quick to suit the French."
+
+Up hill and down dale they raced, through thriving cities, and quaint
+villages, past peasant cottages and princely chateaux, lying beautiful
+and serene in the bright sunshine.
+
+They were in the garden spot of France, a place that had yet been
+spared the horror and devastation of war, and the only thing that
+seemed unnatural was the striking absence of young men.
+
+Women everywhere were doing the work, in the fields, in the stores, at
+the railroad stations, on the streets and country roads.  Scarcely any
+males were seen except old men and boys.
+
+There was no need to ask where the young men were.  At Verdun, on the
+Somme, on the Aisne; everywhere on that long line of trenches that
+stretched from the Vosges to the sea, they were fighting like heroes to
+keep the Hun at bay.
+
+And on the heart of each were written those immortal words spoken at
+Verdun: "_They shall not pass!_"
+
+Hour after hour went by.  Suddenly Frank asked:
+
+"What was that, fellows?  Did you hear it?"
+
+"Sounded to me like thunder," said Bart.
+
+"With a sky like this?" replied Frank.  "Never.  Listen!"
+
+Borne on the wind came a long, booming sound, growing longer and louder
+as they sped toward it, falling fitfully at times, only to swell into a
+mightier rumble like the roar of waves dashing against the coast.
+
+They looked at each other with comprehension dawning in their eyes.
+
+"It's thunder all right, Bart," said Frank, quietly.  "It's the thunder
+of the guns!  We are getting near the fighting front at last!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE AIRSHIP RAID
+
+The signs multiplied now that they were approaching the battle lines.
+Apart from the ominous roar which had now become unceasing, war showed
+its grim face on every hand.
+
+They dashed through "rest billets"--the towns behind the lines where
+the exhausted soldiers, who had served their term in the trenches, were
+sent back for a few days or weeks of rest while fresh troops took their
+places.
+
+The roads became more congested with trucks carrying supplies and
+ammunition to the front.  Ambulances came past in an endless stream,
+bearing their quota of wounded men.  Hospitals were everywhere, marked
+with a Red Cross that bespoke their mission of mercy and healing.
+
+And there were cemeteries too, with their endless rows of simple wooden
+crosses on which were inscribed the names and regimental numbers of
+those who slept beneath.
+
+Cripples, too, there were, with missing legs or arms, and blinded ones,
+who had looked for the last time on scenes of warfare.
+
+It was the seamy side of war that thrust itself upon their sight.  But
+though it sobered, it did not daunt these eager young Americans who had
+come to do their part and "see it through."  It only deepened their
+indignation at the merciless military power that had brought such woe
+and misery upon the world, and each breathed a vow to himself that he
+would not rest until that power was curbed and punished as it deserved
+to be.
+
+"This looks like the real thing," remarked Frank.
+
+"That's what!" agreed Bart.  "You can see already that war is what
+Sherman said it was."
+
+"This is nothing," put in Billy.  "It's only the fringe.  It's only
+when we get in the trenches that we'll know anything about it."
+
+"Some of us may not know much then," put in Tom.  "It all depends on
+how long we succeed in dodging the bullets."
+
+"Yes," observed Billy.  "Or our experience may be like that of the
+Tommy who said 'First, I 'ears a 'orrible noise and the next thing I
+'ears the nurse sayin', "Sit up and drink this!"'"
+
+There was a laugh that broke the tension, and before long they reached
+the district that had been chosen for their intensive training.
+
+It was a wide stretch of rolling country several miles in extent, and
+it had been chosen because it resembled in its main features the actual
+territory where the fight was going on.
+
+There were brooks and hills, valleys and quarries, woods and
+meadowlands with a few small hamlets of scattered houses.
+
+There were no spacious barracks such as they had been used to in the
+cantonments at home.  The troops were quartered here and there as
+opportunity offered.
+
+Thousands of dog tents had been erected on the level places and in
+these the majority of the men were sheltered.
+
+Every cottage and chateau also had its quota, and farmhouses with their
+outlying barns and stables were utilized to the utmost.
+
+"Hope they don't separate us, fellows," said Frank, as he watched the
+corporals and sergeants picking out various squads and assigning them
+their billets.
+
+"Gee, so do I," echoed Bart.  "The old bunch has been together ever
+since we left Camport and I have a hunch our luck's going to continue."
+
+The "hunch" proved to have a solid foundation, for the four army boys
+were all sent off together with about forty more of their comrades to
+an old mill that stood near the edge of the camp.
+
+It was a low, rambling structure with plenty of windows that gave it
+ample light and an air of homely comfort that delighted the young
+soldiers.
+
+"This is what I call luck," chortled Tom, as he looked about him and
+glanced up at the well-thatched roof that seemed rain-proof.
+
+"It beats a dog tent by a thousand miles," returned Billy.
+
+"It doesn't matter so much while the weather's still warm," said Bart,
+"but oh, boy! when the winter comes, maybe it won't be good to have a
+snug roof like this over our heads."
+
+A little cottage adjoining the mill served as a mess hall for the squad
+billeted there and the presiding genius of the place was a French cook,
+who had as his assistant a young Irish lad whose most prominent points
+were a shock of red hair and a mischievous disposition.
+
+"Anatole is a good chef, all right," Frank remarked one day, shortly
+after they had had a most appetizing meal.  "He may have his faults and
+probably does, but he cooks to beat the band."
+
+"Yes," agreed Bart, "he's a dandy cook but he's got a hair-trigger
+temper.  I've heard him bawling out his helper in all the French
+epithets there are, and that's quite a few apparently."
+
+"Righto!" laughed Frank.  "There's a big lot of them and Anatole knows
+them all.  He could give points to the driver of a team of army mules.
+You've got to hand it to him for being thorough anyway.  Without that
+outlet he'd probably go crazy."
+
+"Possibly," assented Bart.  "There's no telling.  But listen.  'Speak
+of the cook and you'll hear him shouting' or words to that effect.
+Great Scott!  He's mad for fair this time."
+
+"You've said it!" ejaculated Frank.  "He's about as angry as it's
+possible for a Frenchman to be--and that's going some."
+
+Fate had willed that that day the Irish helper in a spirit of impish
+perversity should have annoyed the cook in various covert and ingenious
+ways until the latter's irritation broke all bounds.
+
+The cottage door flew open and the boy bounced out, about two jumps
+ahead of the cook whose face was crimson and eyes bulging.
+
+"Pat has an air of haste about him," remarked Frank with a grin.
+
+"He'd better have," laughed Bart.  "Anatole is up in the air for fair."
+
+"Leetle rat zat you air!" shouted the enraged cook, shaking a ladle
+furiously at his helper who stood at a safe distance wearing a
+tantalizing grin.  "Sacre! but you drive me cr-r-r-azy weet your seely
+tricks.  You air one Irish monkey, zat ees what you air!  Ef I get hol'
+of you--ah, you weel not forget eet soon, I tell you zat!" and he made
+a clumsy rush for the boy who easily dodged around a corner of the
+cottage.  The cook raced after him and the pair made several circuits
+of the little building, although it was evident that the cook had
+absolutely no chance of catching his agile tormentor.
+
+They made a highly ludicrous sight, and Frank and Bart, who happened to
+be the only spectators of the scene, roared with laughter, stamping
+about and hammering each other on the shoulder in the excess of their
+merriment.
+
+But the cook was not long in discovering the futility of his efforts
+and gave up the chase, puffing and blowing like a grampus.  His wrath
+had in nowise abated however, and he shook his fist impotently at the
+boy, who by his very silence and the ease with which he eluded him
+drove the unfortunate chef into a very paroxysm of fury.
+
+"_Mille tonnerres!_" he shouted, and hurled the heavy ladle he had been
+carrying straight at his assistant's head.  But the lad ducked in time,
+and the heavy missile went whistling past him and found lodgment in the
+underbrush beyond.
+
+"Better luck nixt toime," jeered the imp.  "Try agin, why don't ye?
+Ye've got plinty uv thim ladles left.  'Tis the bist uv exercise,
+throwin' thim things is."
+
+Frank and Bart shouted afresh, while the outraged cook tore his hair in
+desperation and gave vent to a stream of epithets.  The boy said
+nothing, but put his hand to his ear and affected to listen in a manner
+far more irritating than words could possibly have been.
+
+The cook's face grew more crimson than before and his naturally
+protruding eyes seemed about to leave their sockets.  He danced wildly
+about, shaking his clenched fists madly in the air.  At last however,
+just when he seemed threatened with a stroke of apoplexy, he stopped
+from sheer exhaustion and for the first time became conscious of the
+presence of Frank and Bart who were leaning on each other for support,
+convulsed with laughter and the tears streaming from their eyes.
+
+He glared malevolently at them for a few moments but finding that this
+had little effect at last turned and went into the cottage still
+muttering imprecations on the head of his assistant.
+
+"Help, help!" gasped Frank.  "Hold me up, Bart, or I'll go down.  My,
+but that was rich."
+
+"All of that," agreed Bart, wiping the tears from his eyes.  "If we'd
+only had a moving picture machine and a phonograph handy to take down
+that scene.  It would be the biggest hit of the age."
+
+"It would have meant oodles of coin and no mistake," assented Bart.
+"We'd have been beyond the reach of want for the rest of our natural
+lives."
+
+"Anatole's got a circus clown beaten by a thousand miles," replied
+Frank.  "It's too bad that the rest of the fellows couldn't have been
+here to see the circus.  But I suppose it's ungrateful to criticize
+fate after she's been so kind to us."
+
+"I should say so," chuckled Bart.  "If I live to be a hundred years
+old, I never expect to see anything funnier," and at the remembrance of
+the comical scene he started laughing afresh with his hand pressed
+against his side.
+
+"Just the same," said Frank, when they had at last quieted down, "I
+wouldn't like to be in that red-headed helper's shoes.  He's got to go
+into the cottage soon, and when he does I have a hunch that something
+will happen to him."
+
+"I think it's extremely likely," agreed Bart, "and I can't say but what
+he deserves it.  It seems to me that Anatole has something coming to
+him in the way of revenge."
+
+It was with considerable amusement that the two chums watched the
+actions of the Irish lad.  For some time he kept clear of the cottage,
+but then the door opened and the cook's head appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Come here, you Mickey!" he called, in tones meant to be reassuring,
+"and peel ze potatoes."
+
+With a good deal of caution the boy reluctantly approached, but stopped
+just out of the cook's reach for a parley.
+
+"Wot ye goin' ter do wit' me whin ye git holt uv me?" he queried.  "I
+wuz only foolin' wit' ye before.  Can't ye take a little joke?"
+
+"Nevaire mind," replied the cook realizing his advantage.  "Come an'
+get beezy, else I tell ze captain you air--wat you call
+eet?--inzubordinate.  Zen he make you come."
+
+The boy glanced desperately around in search of some way of escape from
+his predicament, but finding none finally went reluctantly into the
+cottage.
+
+"Here's where retribution falls on him," said Frank with a grin.
+
+He was not mistaken, for the boy had scarcely entered when there issued
+forth the sound of several lusty smacks.  Then came a high-pitched
+scolding which showed that Anatole had had recourse to moral as well as
+physical suasion.
+
+"I don't know but what I'd rather have the licking than the scolding,"
+chuckled Bart as they listened to the voluble eloquence of the chef.
+
+"Either one's bad enough," laughed Frank.  "I guess our young
+red-headed friend has got all that was coming to him."
+
+Now the intensive training of the boys began in earnest.  And training
+now had a meaning that it had never had while they were still on
+American soil.
+
+For at that time they had not fully grasped the fact that they were
+actually at war.  There had been a certain dream-like quality about it
+that had been like a scene from a play.
+
+The only cannon they had heard were those fired in salute or at
+practice.  The zip of a bullet had only meant that that bullet was
+speeding toward a wooden target.
+
+But now the roar of cannon, multiplied a thousand fold above everything
+they had heard before, meant that deadly missiles were seeking out
+human life in an effort to maim and destroy.
+
+And soon--how soon they did not know, but still soon--they themselves
+would be the target for whining bullets and shrieking shells.
+
+Practice now meant something.  Expertness might mean the difference
+between saving life or losing it.  A new spirit ran through the men
+like an electric current.  No need now for their officers to urge them
+on.  If anything, they had to hold the young soldiers back, lest they
+burn up their vitality and exhaust their strength before they were put
+to the final test.
+
+As far as possible, the camp became a mimic battlefield.  Trenches were
+dug, precisely like those that they would soon be holding against the
+attacks of the enemy.
+
+Barbed wire fences were built by one regiment and cut through and
+beaten down by another, which, for the time being, was chosen to play
+the part of the enemy.
+
+The bayonet practice was no longer against dummies but against a picked
+squad of their own comrades.  And each side in these mimic battles was
+so eager to win that at times they almost forgot themselves, with
+slight wounds and bruises as a result before their officers could
+intervene.
+
+"We're getting there, Bart!" cried Frank, as he wiped the perspiration
+from his brow, after a particularly strenuous encounter.  "I'd back our
+boys right now to hold their own against any bunch of equal size that
+the Boches can send against them."
+
+"We sure are doing dandy work," assented Bart.  "I wonder when they're
+going to put us on the firing line?"
+
+"Before long I hope," chimed in Tom.  "I'm aching to get a whack at
+them.  It's the only way I can let off steam," he added, ruefully.  "I
+came near running one of the boys through with my bayonet to-day."
+
+"I wonder where they'll put us," conjectured Billy.  "I suppose they'll
+sandwich us in with some of the French troops for a while until we get
+our bearings."
+
+"Maybe," said Frank.  "But I'd like better to have us fellows take up
+some sector and hold it all by ourselves.  The tri-color's a fine flag,
+but when I fire my first bullet at a Hun I want to be under the Stars
+and Stripes."
+
+"You've said it!" declared Tom.
+
+"You fellows are regular fire-eaters," laughed Dick Lever, a young
+fellow with whom the boys had struck up a friendship.
+
+He wore an aviator's uniform and was a fine type of young American.  He
+was one of those who, on seeing war impending, had not waited for the
+formal declaration, but, at their own expense, had sailed to the old
+country to help France and, so doing, the United States.
+
+Bronzed, upstanding, clear-eyed, he had succeeded in making the army
+boys like him immensely and had imparted to them many useful and
+interesting stories of modern warfare.
+
+"You're a good one to talk," said Billy.  "When it comes to fire
+eating, you aren't so slow yourself.  I heard from one of the fellows
+yesterday what you did at the battle of the Somme."
+
+Dick blushed like a girl.
+
+"That was nothing," he protested.  "Just part of the day's work."
+
+"What's the dope?" asked Tom with interest.  "I haven't heard the
+story, and from the beginning, it ought to be good."
+
+"Will Scott was telling me about it," said Billy.  "He says that Dick
+here went over the German lines and started a little war all by
+himself.  He flew low near the ground, letting loose his machine gun at
+a whole regiment of German soldiers just forming up for action.  Went
+along a little further and lambasted a bunch of German officers in an
+automobile, killed two of them and made the others jump out and hide
+under the machine.  Then came back and, just for good measure, let fly
+his machine gun at the same regiment he'd soaked going out.  After that
+I guess he knocked off and called it a day's work.
+
+"That's why he wears that decoration," he added, pointing to the cross
+on Dick's jacket.
+
+"See him blush," chaffed Tom.  "It's funny how these fellows that can
+face any number of bullets, turn coward when it comes to praise.  You'd
+almost think we were accusing him of a crime."
+
+"Any other of the boys would have done the same if he had had my
+chance," said Dick.  "Sometimes I go days at a time without having a
+chance for a scrap.  That just happened to be my lucky day."
+
+"The Huns didn't call it that," laughed Frank.
+
+Dick who, as a matter of custom, had been scanning the sky, uttered a
+sharp exclamation.
+
+"Here's another bit of luck, fellows, perhaps," he cried, and without
+further farewell, was off like a shot toward his machine, which had
+been waiting, with his mechanic to guard it, a hundred yards away.
+
+High up in the sky appeared a squadron of airships that by their
+markings and designs the boys recognized as enemy planes.  They were
+evidently bent on adventure and had come much further beyond the lines
+than usual.
+
+The French were quick to accept the challenge and the anti-aircraft
+guns got into action at once.  Puffs of shrapnel burst like white
+clouds in and about the marauding planes.
+
+Even as the boys watched, one missile found its mark, and the plane,
+out of control, whirled round and round and then fell swiftly to the
+ground within the French lines.
+
+But not with guns alone did the Allies respond.  Like a flock of
+falcons, a squadron of French aeroplanes shot swiftly up into the air,
+climbing, climbing in the effort for altitude, so that they might swoop
+down upon their prey from above.
+
+"There goes Dick's plane in the van!" cried Frank, his voice tense with
+excitement.
+
+"That's the place for America!" exclaimed Tom.  "Always in the van!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE BAPTISM OF FIRE
+
+All faces were turned toward the sky.  It was the army boys' first
+glimpse of a battle in the air and the grim game held them spellbound.
+
+Like great birds the battle planes wheeled and swooped, now diving, now
+climbing, each jockeying so as to get the weather gauge of its opponent
+and bring its machine guns into action.
+
+The forces were nearly equal and for some time victory hovered in the
+balance.  But either the staying quality or the alertness of the Allies
+finally turned the scale.  Two of the enemy planes were shot down, and
+a third, evidently crippled, but not wholly out of control, sought the
+ground within its own lines.
+
+The German force, now depleted, turned east and made off at full speed,
+with the Allies in hot pursuit.
+
+Then the sky clouded over and the finish of the fight was lost to the
+eager watchers below.  But they had seen enough to know that the
+raiders had been beaten back and that victory rested with the Allies
+and they were jubilant at the result.
+
+"The Huns went back quicker than they came," gloated Tom.
+
+"Right-o!" cried Bart, gleefully.  "They came to shear and they went
+back shorn."
+
+
+  "The Kaiser, he has lost his sheep
+    And doesn't know where to find them,
+  Leave them alone and they'll come home
+    With our planes close behind them."
+
+
+So parodied Billy.
+
+"I hope Dick comes out of it all right," said Frank, a little soberly.
+
+"Trust that boy," said Tom, confidently.  "I don't imagine anyone needs
+to worry about him.  If he can't take care of himself, nobody can."
+
+But the Germans, though beaten in that skirmish, were far from being
+discouraged, and the boys were to learn that very night with what a
+persistent foe they had to deal.
+
+It had been a hard and exciting day and now, after a steaming hot
+supper, they were scattered about the old mill in comfort and utter
+relaxation.
+
+Some were smoking, others chatting, some mending their clothes, which
+in these days of strenuous work were often in need of repair, while one
+or two by the light of candles were writing letters to the folks at
+home.
+
+Billy, seated on a stool, was strumming a banjo which had been his
+solace many a time while he was stationed on the Mexican border and
+which now was doing duty in France.
+
+"Hit 'er up, Billy," said Bart, lazily.  "We don't mind being miserable
+if it gives you any comfort."
+
+"Quit your knocking," grinned Billy.  "You know you're just dying to
+hear it.  What do you fellows want--the Moonlight Sonata or something
+else simple like that?"
+
+"That's too high class for this bunch," said Tom.  "Though there's
+plenty of moonlight outside," he added, as he looked out the window.
+
+"I've had all the outside I want for one day," said Frank.  "I'd just
+as soon stay where I am."  He was penning a letter to his mother,
+telling her of many things that had happened, and stating that, so far,
+he had not had a chance to learn anything about his grandfather's
+estate.
+
+"Well, I'm waiting," said Billy.  "What does the gang want?  Jazz band
+music?  That's about your style."
+
+"No, give us something that sounds like home," said Tom.  "Some of
+those southern melodies."
+
+"Yes," urged Bart.  "You're a dabster at that, Billy."
+
+"All right," said Billy, cheerfully.  "Anything to oblige."
+
+He picked the strings for a moment and then began to sing softly--
+
+  "Swing low, sweet chariot
+    Gwine for to ca'y me home
+  Swing low, sweet chario--ot
+  Gwine for to ca'y me home."
+
+
+_Bang!_  There was a tremendous explosion close to the mill.  The air
+was filled with a deafening din.
+
+The boys jumped to their feet.
+
+"That hit mighty close!" cried Frank.
+
+"What do you suppose it was?" came from Tom.  "A shell?"
+
+"We're too far away from the German lines for that," replied Bart.
+
+"More likely it's a bomb from an airship," said Frank.  "Let's take a
+squint outside and see."
+
+They rushed out and their first glance was toward the sky.  But there
+was nothing visible there, nor could they hear the whirring of motors
+that was the invariable accompaniment of air raids.
+
+But when they searched around the mill they were more successful, for
+the bright moonlight revealed a freshly dug hole in the ground that
+formed a veritable crater.
+
+"It was a bomb all right," pronounced Frank.  "And from the size of the
+hole it made it was a lallapalooza.  It's lucky it didn't hit the mill."
+
+"I guess some Hun aviator was flying back to his own lines and dropped
+this as a sort of visiting card," said Billy.  "Oh, well, what's a
+little bit of bomb between friends?  Come on back, fellows."
+
+"Yes, come along in and listen to Caruso," chaffed Tom.
+
+Once inside, Billy again picked up his banjo and began to croon.
+
+  "It rained all night the day I left
+    The next day it was dry.
+  The sun so hot I froze to def
+    Suzanna, don't you cry."
+
+
+One after another took up the rollicking chorus--
+
+  "Oh, Suzanna,
+    Don't you cry for me,
+  Fur I'se gwine to Alabama
+    Wif de banjo on my knee."
+
+
+_Bang!  Bang!  Bang!_ came three quick explosions, blending in a
+tremendous roar.
+
+At the same instant a hole appeared in the roof.  Part of it caved in
+and came clattering down while a blinding glare filled the room!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A GRIM REALITY
+
+The strumming ceased and the banjo fell to the floor.  For a moment
+confusion reigned supreme.
+
+The shock and the glare had a paralyzing effect but it lasted only for
+an instant.  Then the army boys pulled themselves together.
+
+"Is anyone hurt?" shouted Frank, as he looked about him.
+
+A groan came from a distant corner.  They rushed in that direction.
+
+Fred Anderson was trying to struggle to his feet and in an instant
+willing arms supported him.  His face was pale, blood was flowing from
+a gash in his forehead and his right leg crumpled up beneath him as he
+tried to bear his weight upon it.
+
+"I guess the old pin's gone back on me, boys," he said with a faint
+attempt to smile.  "I don't seem to have any feeling in it.  I guess
+the Huns got me that time."
+
+A quick examination showed that the leg was broken just below the knee.
+
+They quickly improvised a temporary splint and a field ambulance was
+called.  The gash in the head proved to be only a flesh wound of no
+great importance.  But it bled freely and gave the impression that Fred
+was dangerously, perhaps mortally wounded.
+
+It was the first time that these young novices in the art of war had
+seen blood flowing from American veins from a wound inflicted by a
+German, and it brought home to them that they were really in the war
+and might at any instant, like their luckless comrade, come to hand
+grips with death.
+
+"That sure was a close call," remarked Frank, after Fred, having been
+made as comfortable as possible, had been carried off by the ambulance
+to the field hospital.  "It might have blown us all to bits."
+
+"That roof may be all right to keep out rain," said Billy, "but it
+wasn't built for bombs."
+
+"It must have been a glancing blow," commented Tom.  "If it had come
+plump through our name would have been Dennis.  It must have spent most
+of its force on the ridge pole and slid off to the ground."
+
+"Very considerate of it," said Bart, dryly.
+
+"There may be more where that came from," suggested Billy.  "There may
+be a whole squadron of Hun flyers up there in the sky."
+
+"I guess it will be healthier to stay outside for a while," said Tom.
+"We can see the bombs coming and dodge them.  It will be a new kind of
+outdoor sport."
+
+"It's a new game all right," Bart flung over his shoulder as they made
+their way outside.  "And a game where the stakes are high.  You pay
+dearly if you lose."
+
+They all reached the open, where they found that the entire camp had
+been aroused by the nocturnal raid.  They quickly learned from their
+excited comrades that other billets had been targets for the marauders
+and that several soldiers had been severely injured, while one was
+killed.
+
+Searchlights were sweeping the sky in the attempt to locate the hostile
+planes.  Anti-aircraft guns were popping, and the French escadrille had
+already mounted to give battle.
+
+"There comes one!" shouted Frank, as his keen eyes caught sight of a
+tiny blaze coming through the air.  "That's the fuse of a bomb."
+
+"And it's coming right toward us!" yelled Bart.  "Run fellows--quick!"
+
+They needed no second injunction and it was well they moved quickly,
+for a moment later, the messenger of death came down close to the spot
+where they had been standing and exploded with a tremendous roar.
+
+But they had thrown themselves flat on their faces, behind whatever
+shelter they could find and the rain of iron missiles zipped over and
+all around them without inflicting much damage.
+
+"I went down in a mud puddle that time," growled Bart, as he rose
+dripping.
+
+"I notice you stayed there, though," grinned Tom.
+
+"Any port in a storm," laughed Billy.  "There's no time to pick and
+choose when those ticklers are coming down.  It's a case of 'the quick
+or the dead'."
+
+"I was quick all right," grumbled Tom, as he rubbed his knee, "and I'd
+almost rather be dead than do it again.  See that stone?  It got me!"
+
+For some minutes more occasional bombs dropped down over a wide area,
+especial attention being devoted to the field hospital in accordance
+with the usual brutal German tactics.
+
+But there were no more casualties, and after awhile the bombardment
+ceased.
+
+"Guess they're all out of ammunition," conjectured Frank, when at last
+quiet reigned.
+
+"Either that or our aviators have driven them off as they did this
+afternoon," returned Bart.
+
+"Let's go back to the mill," Tom suggested.  "There'll be plenty of
+ventilation in the old crib to-night."
+
+"And my cot's right beneath that hole in the roof," grumbled Bart.
+
+"Safest place in the whole shebang," comforted Frank.  "Lightning never
+strikes twice in the same spot."
+
+"Yes, but suppose it rains," grouched Bart.
+
+"Aw, it's good for the complexion," grinned Tom.  "Anyway, you're
+soaked through now, aren't you?  Some fellows are never satisfied."
+
+"Ah, stop fighting!" said Frank.  "It couldn't rain if it wanted to
+with a moon like that."
+
+Once back in the mill, the army boys set about repairing the havoc
+wrought by the bomb.
+
+Billy picked up the banjo, patted it lovingly and was relieved to find
+that his favorite instrument had come through the German attack
+uninjured.
+
+"Glad you're all right, old girl," he said, running his fingers over
+the strings.  "But I guess you're through for one night."
+
+"Yes," chuckled Tom, as he started to unlace his shoes.  "The Huns have
+given us their idea of a moonlight serenade!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+NICK RABIG UNDER ARREST
+
+It might have been expected that a sleepless night would have followed
+the raid.  But the young Americans were far too healthy and their
+nerves were already becoming too well steeled to let the Germans, like
+Macbeth, "murder sleep."  Their eyes closed almost as soon as their
+heads touched the pillows, not to open again until reveille sounded the
+next morning.
+
+They were a little more subdued than usual, however, as they dressed,
+for there was poor Fred's empty cot and some dark red blotches on the
+floor to remind them of their comrade's plight and their own narrow
+escape.
+
+"I wonder how Fred's getting along," said Tom, voicing the general
+thought.
+
+"All right, I hope," returned Frank.  "It will make him sore to be
+cooped up now with a broken leg, just when the boys are putting the
+finishing touches on their training."
+
+They were relieved to find on inquiry after breakfast, that Fred was
+doing finely, that the wound in his head was negligible and that the
+break in his leg was a simple fracture so that in six weeks he would
+probably be as well as ever.
+
+"The old scout will have one satisfaction, anyway," said Bart.  "He's
+the first one in our bunch who has actually shed his blood for Uncle
+Sam."
+
+"Gee, he beat us to it," agreed Tom.  "But don't worry, we'll have
+plenty of chances later on."
+
+In the interval before drill, they strolled about the old mill, seeking
+traces of the visitation of the night before.  These were easily
+visible for there were immense shell holes where the bombs had buried
+themselves in the earth.
+
+They found one of the missiles that had not exploded.  Bart was about
+to pick it up when Frank shouted a warning.
+
+"Nix on that funny business!" he cried.  "You never can tell when those
+fellows will start working."
+
+"Yes," added Bart.  "Those fingers of yours will come in handy later
+on.  You'll need them in your business."
+
+"Yes," remarked their corporal, Wilson, who sauntered up to them at the
+moment.  "For all we know that thing may have been fixed so that it
+wouldn't explode when it struck the ground but would the minute
+somebody picked it up and commenced fooling with it.  The only safe way
+is to give them all a wide berth.
+
+The corporal was popular with the men directly under him, and although
+he was a strict disciplinarian and kept the men up to their work, there
+was nothing petty or tyrannical about him.  And the respect the men had
+for him was heightened by the stories that were told in the regiment of
+the adventures he had undergone.
+
+For he had been a rover over the earth, and in his short life of thirty
+years had passed through more exciting scenes than fall to the lot of
+most men in a lifetime.  He had been a miner in Australia, had ridden
+the ranges in Arizona, "mushed" in the Klondike, and been at one time a
+member of the famous Canadian Mounted Police.  He was quiet and
+reserved, never boasting of his exploits and extremely efficient in
+anything he set about to do.  He was a dead shot and could shoot from
+the hip with either hand.  A coin tossed into the air at a distance of
+fifty feet he could clip four times out of five.
+
+On one occasion the boys had been astonished eye witnesses of his
+shooting.  The nine of clubs had been pinned to a tree sixty paces
+distant and Wilson, pulling the trigger so quickly that the eye could
+scarcely follow, had wiped out the spots in nine successive shots.
+
+He was as courageous as he was skilful, and in case of trouble could be
+counted on as one of the most valuable members of the regiment.
+
+So that when he showed a disposition to depart from his usual reserve
+and take part in the conversation the boys made room for him with
+alacrity.
+
+"Fritz is full of cunning little tricks," the corporal continued.
+"They played the fountain pen game and got a lot of our fellows before
+the Allies got wise to it."
+
+"That's a new one on me," said Frank.  "What is the fountain pen game?"
+
+"Why," answered Corporal Wilson, as he seated himself comfortably on a
+nearby rock and struck a match for his pipe, "the Heinies in the first
+line trenches when our boys went over the top and drove them out used
+to leave behind them a lot of their stuff because they usually skipped
+in a hurry.
+
+"One of our boys would find a fountain pen among other things and think
+he had a prize, but the first time he started to unscrew the cap the
+thing would explode and smash his hand to bits.  We've got a good many
+cripples in the ranks on account of that.  But the game's played out
+now, and they'll have to think up a new one."
+
+"We ought to get even with them for that," said Tom.
+
+"Oh, we've got even all right," grinned the corporal.  "We worked them
+on the hand grenades.  You know how it is sometimes, when the first
+line trenches are facing each other.  A Frenchman or a Britisher throws
+over a hand grenade, the Hun catches it on the wing, as it were, if its
+a long time fuse and throws it back in the hope that it will explode in
+the Allied trenches and thus become a boomerang."
+
+"Rather a risky game I call it," said Billy.  "It wouldn't be any fun
+to have one of those gentle little things go off in your hand."
+
+"That's where the trick comes in," said the Corporal.  "You know of
+course, there are two kinds of fuses.  The short time fuse has red
+threads in it, the long time fuse hasn't.  If the German sees that
+there are none of these red threads in the fuse of the grenade that
+drops near him he figures he's got time to throw it back.
+
+"Well, one of the British Tommies had a bright idea and he carefully
+picked all the red threads out of a short time fuse.  Then he zipped it
+over.  Of course the Heinie picked it up, thinking it was a long timer
+and that was about all for Heinie.  It blew him and all the men near
+him to German headquarters."
+
+"To German headquarters," said Bart, wonderingly.  "I don't get you."
+
+The corporal grinned.
+
+"Haven't you heard that?" he said.  "A British Tommy wrote home that
+he'd had pretty good luck through the war for he'd sent a dozen Germans
+to Hades.  The British censor scratched out the word, 'Hades' and wrote
+above it, 'It is not permitted to refer to German headquarters'."
+
+The boys laughed.
+
+"And yet they say the British haven't a sense of humor," commented
+Frank.
+
+"That's why I say," summed up the corporal, "that you've got to be
+mighty careful in handling all these contraptions.  A fool and his
+fingers are soon parted."
+
+"Does he mean me?" asked Bart with a grin.
+
+"You've said something," agreed Billy, with unflattering frankness.
+
+The corporal strolled on.
+
+"Fine fellow, that Wilson," remarked Frank.
+
+"He's all of that," agreed Billy, who having been with him when the
+regiment was on the Mexican border knew him better than his companions
+did.  "That fellow could lick his weight in wildcats.  There isn't
+anything he's afraid to tackle.  I heard a story about him once that
+you fellows wouldn't believe if I told you."
+
+"Let's hear it," said Bart.
+
+"Shoot," chimed in Tom.  "We'll see about believing it after we've
+heard what it is."
+
+"It happened down in Nicaragua," went on Billy.  "Caribtown, I think it
+was, or some place near there.  There was some little dinky revolution
+going on and Wilson it seems had gone down there on some filibustering
+expedition.  He drank pretty freely in those days though he doesn't
+touch a drop now.
+
+"It seems he was in one of the town resorts when he heard talk about a
+boa constrictor that had recently been captured and confined in a big
+cage.  The snakes down there don't measure more than ten or twelve
+feet, but they can easily crush a man if they get their coils around
+him.
+
+"Wilson just then had got into a condition where he was ready to fight
+a regiment, and he sneered at their fear of the snake.  They egged him
+on until he boasted that he would be willing to meet the snake in a
+close room with nothing but a knife.  The riffraff there called his
+bluff and it was arranged that the fight should take place the next
+morning."
+
+"Some contract!" ejaculated Tom.
+
+"Is this straight goods, Billy, or are you getting us on a string?"
+asked Bart suspiciously.
+
+"On the dead level," answered Billy.  "I had it from a fellow who was
+down there at the time and knew all about it."
+
+"Stop chinning, you fellows, and let Billy get on with his story,"
+commanded Frank.  "He's just getting to the creepy part now and I want
+to know how the thing turned out."
+
+"Well," continued Billy, "when Wilson woke up the next morning he
+realized what he was up against.  But he was as game as a pebble, and
+though he knew the odds were against him he wouldn't back out.
+
+"The snake, that had been teased and irritated until it was bursting
+with rage, was dumped from its cage into a back room of the resort.
+Then Wilson, armed only with a long knife that they had lent him, went
+in and shut the door behind him, while the natives crowded around the
+windows to see the fight.
+
+"The instant the snake saw Wilson he reared up almost to the ceiling
+and flung himself at the man's throat.  Wilson dodged and the fangs
+caught him in the shoulder.  Wilson slashed savagely at the coils that
+were trying to coil themselves around his body and they staggered
+around the room.  But the knife failed to reach a vital spot and
+finally one of the folds got around Wilson's legs and he fell to the
+floor, still stabbing savagely.  The snake had won the first round, and
+it promised to be the last."
+
+There was a gasp from Billy's listeners but their interest was too
+tense to permit of any interruption.
+
+"Just then," continued Billy, "something happened.  One of the natives
+who had a little more humanity than the rest of the crowd had sculled
+off to an American gunboat that was lying in the harbor, and told of
+the scrap that was going to be pulled off.  The captain sent over a
+squad of marines with a rush and they got there just in time to break
+in the door and hack the snake to pieces with their cutlasses.  Another
+minute and it would have been all over.  As it was, Wilson was
+unconscious, and it was some weeks before he came around ship-shape."
+
+"What a daring thing that was to do!" ejaculated Frank.
+
+"He certainly was there with the nerve!" exclaimed Bart.
+
+"I'll bet he hasn't had any use for snakes since then," added Tom.
+
+"In one way it was a good thing," said Billy, "for it made Wilson swear
+off from drinking and he's never touched liquor since.  You see how he
+is now, as steady as a church."
+
+"Well," commented Bart, "he'll have all the fighting he wants from now
+on."
+
+"Yes," agreed Frank with a laugh, "with snakes that wear helmets."
+
+"Look who's here, boys!" exclaimed Tom suddenly, as they saw four
+soldiers approaching with a prisoner under guard.
+
+"Why, it's Nick Rabig!" they exclaimed in unison as they recognized the
+burly figure that slouched sullenly along between the quartette
+guarding him.
+
+"What has he been up to, now, I wonder?" questioned Billy curiously as
+they sauntered forward to intercept the party.
+
+Rabig favored them with a scowl that had rarely been absent from his
+face since he had been caught in the draft.
+
+"What's the trouble?" asked Frank of the leader of the file, whom he
+happened to know.
+
+"Insubordination," was the terse response.  "Refused to salute an
+officer."
+
+"Putting him in the jug on general principles," volunteered another,
+who was more communicative.  "He's been shirking ever since he got
+here."
+
+"A bad egg," added the third.  "It's lucky there aren't many of his
+type among the boys.  The Huns would have an easy job if they were all
+like him."
+
+They passed on to the building that served as a guardhouse, and which,
+be it said to the credit of the boys in France, had very few inmates.
+For the discipline of the camp was strict and the spirit of the men was
+good.  They felt that they stood to the French for what America was and
+they tried to live up to the high standards laid down for them by
+generations of American ancestors.
+
+"I think that's the best place for Nick," commented Tom as the doors
+closed behind the prisoner.  "He's a surly brute and he might affect
+others.  One rotten apple in a barrel can spoil the whole barrelful."
+
+"He's no good," said Bart.  "Remember how he used to talk on the other
+side?  I'll bet at this minute he'd rather be wearing a Prussian helmet
+than an American uniform."
+
+"Sure thing," said Billy.  "'_Die Wacht am Rhine_' is the only music he
+cares to hear."
+
+At this moment Corporal Wilson returned with a paper in his hand upon
+which he had been noting down the assignments of the day.
+
+"Two of you fellows are in for guard duty," he said, consulting his
+list.  "You, Sheldon, and Raymond will serve till after mess."
+
+He passed on and Bart made a wry face when his back was turned.
+
+"Sweet job!" he muttered.
+
+"Orders are orders," replied Frank, as they shouldered their guns and
+marched down to the guardhouse.
+
+They began to pace back and forth, exchanging a word now and then at
+the point where their beats adjoined.
+
+Nick Rabig was lounging at the barred window in an evil temper.  If
+anything could have added to his anger it was the fact that the two
+young soldiers he most detested had been chosen to stand guard over him
+and witness his humiliation.
+
+Frank's generous nature sensed the prisoner's feeling, and he
+studiously avoided catching his glance or taking any notice of him.
+
+But Rabig, incapable of appreciating Frank's motive, chose to interpret
+this as studied contempt, and his rage flamed forth in a coarse epithet
+that Frank only half caught but that brought him up all standing.
+
+"What's that you said?" he demanded quickly.
+
+"None of your business!" snarled Rabig, but before the glint in Frank's
+eyes he did not venture to repeat the insult.
+
+"Now look here, Rabig," said Frank, sternly.  "Cut out that sort of
+stuff.  I heard what you said and if you were outside here and weren't
+in uniform I'd thrash you within an inch of your life."
+
+"Talk is cheap," sneered Rabig.  "Why didn't you do it when you were on
+the other side?  You had chance enough."
+
+"I had my reasons," replied Frank, "but they're reasons that a fellow
+like you couldn't appreciate.  As it was, you came within an inch of
+getting what was coming to you.  Some day you will get it, Rabig, and
+when I cut loose you'll know there's something doing!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A RATTLING BOUT
+
+Just then the officer of the day approached.  Rabig slunk away from the
+window while Frank resumed his pacing, and the episode ended then and
+there.
+
+At the end of three days Rabig's term expired and he was sent back
+again to his place in the ranks, somewhat subdued in manner though
+really unchastened in spirit.
+
+His hatred of Frank was unabated and in fact seemed to have taken on
+extra bitterness since the sharp exchange at the guard-house.  He
+seldom passed Frank without a sneer on his lip or an ugly gleam in his
+eye, which betrayed the smoldering fires within.
+
+Frank, on his part, bore no rancor.  His nature was too open and
+healthy to nurse a grudge, and although he avoided speaking to Rabig,
+he seldom thought of him except when the exigencies of military duty
+threw them together.
+
+"You're as popular as the smallpox with that gink," said Billy one day,
+after Rabig had passed them with his usual malignant stare at Frank.
+
+"You want to keep your eyes open, Frank," added Tom, who, knowing Rabig
+better than Billy, distrusted him profoundly.  "He's got something up
+his sleeve."
+
+"I don't think it would be safe to be alongside him in the trenches,"
+put in Bart.  "Especially on a dark night.  It's an easy thing there to
+slip a bullet into a man you don't like, and charge it up against the
+Germans."
+
+"Oh, shucks!" laughed Frank, "Rabig's pretty bad but he isn't as bad as
+that."
+
+Several weeks went by, weeks of strain and hard work that were rapidly
+converting the new army into a first-class fighting machine.
+
+But "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," and the officers saw
+to it that there was plenty of entertainment for the men when the hard
+day's work was over.
+
+There were improvised vaudeville entertainments and, as there were many
+actors in the ranks, including some whose names were famous, the
+performances were really good.
+
+Then too, there were boxing matches, which were perhaps the most
+popular of all.  The boys themselves took part in these and there was a
+good deal of rivalry, all of it good-natured, among the representatives
+of the various companies and regiments in camp.
+
+The Government had been quick to recognize the value of boxing, not
+only as a physical exercise, but because it aided vastly in the bayonet
+drill.
+
+The two contests closely resembled each other and excellence in one
+meant excellence in both.  There was the same sparring for advantage,
+feinting, alternate advance and retreat, evading and covering up,
+attacking and defending.
+
+And because of this, every camp had its official boxing instructor and
+the sport formed part of the regular drill.
+
+Great care was taken to avoid any brutal element.  The rounds were
+limited to two minutes each and the men were cautioned against letting
+go with all their weight.
+
+It was a matter of points secured by skill, and it was closely akin to
+a fencing bout with buttons on the foils to avoid any serious injury.
+
+Frank had always had a fondness for the sport even before he joined the
+army.  He and Bart had often put on the gloves in a friendly bout at
+the Camport gymnasium.  He was as quick as a cat on his feet, a good
+judge of distance, and unerring in picking out the weak points of his
+opponent's offense.
+
+Under the skillful training that he received from McGrath, who was a
+well-known amateur boxer and had been put in charge of the athletic
+sports of the camp where the boys were stationed, he had made
+surprising progress and was admitted to be easily the best soldier with
+the gloves in his own special battalion.
+
+One night a boxing programme had been staged for Frank's regiment and a
+series of interesting bouts was looked for.
+
+"Are you going on to-night, Frank?" asked Bart.
+
+"Yes," Frank replied.  "And I feel in dandy shape.  I never felt more
+full of pep than I do just now."
+
+"Who's McGrath going to put against you?" asked Tom.
+
+"I'm slated to meet Thompson, of company F," replied Frank.
+
+"And he's a crackajack, too," put in Billy.  "He cleaned up the champs
+of all the other companies when the old Thirty-seventh was down on the
+Mexican border.  You've got your work cut out for you, Frank."
+
+And Billy's prediction was verified, for on that night Frank found that
+Thompson was an opponent to be reckoned with.  It was a slashing,
+four-round bout with the scales hanging even most of the time, but in
+the closing round Frank had a shade the better of it and was announced
+the victor.
+
+Amid tumultuous handclapping of company B, whose champion he was, Frank
+waved his hand smilingly and was about to go off the platform when
+Corporal Wilson, who was acting as master of ceremonies, stopped him
+with a gesture.
+
+"Pretty well winded, Sheldon?" he asked.
+
+"Not a bit," laughed Frank.  "I'm as fresh as a daisy.  Like John Paul
+Jones, I've just begun to fight."
+
+"That's good," smiled Wilson, "because I'm short a match.  One of the
+pair who were to come on after you and Thompson is rather under the
+weather and the doctor won't let him take part, though he's game as a
+fighting cock and wants to go on anyway.  If you felt in shape for it I
+thought perhaps you might help out by taking on some other fellow for a
+few minutes so that the boys won't be disappointed."
+
+"Sure thing," said Frank.  "Bring him along."
+
+"I haven't got anyone picked out, just this minute," said the corporal
+a little perplexedly.
+
+"Send out a call for volunteers," Frank suggested.  "It will make it
+all the more interesting."
+
+"That's the idea," said the corporal.  "Any of you fellows want to put
+on the gloves with Sheldon?" he called out.
+
+There was a momentary hush and then a figure rose from the throng and
+Nick Rabig pushed his way through to the platform.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+PAYING A DEBT
+
+Frank gave a start of surprise as he saw who his opponent was to be,
+and Bart, who was acting as Frank's second, leaned over him with a word
+of warning.
+
+"Keep your eye peeled, Frank," he advised.  "You know what Rabig is and
+the way he feels toward you.  This is just a scheme of his to get even.
+He isn't coming up here for a friendly bout.  He wants to show you up
+and knock you out if he can."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Frank, unconcernedly.  "But if he tries on
+anything like that I'll give him all he's looking for."
+
+Rabig's second, Werner, one of the few friends he had in the regiment
+and who like himself was suspected of pro-German leanings, or at least
+lukewarmness in the service, took a long time in putting on his
+principal's gloves, and Bart, who was watching him with the eye of a
+hawk, stepped across the platform to witness the operation.
+
+"Let me look at those gloves," he demanded.
+
+"What's the matter with them?" growled Werner.
+
+"This is the matter with them," said Bart, as he pointed to the part
+just above where the knuckles came and where the stuffing of the glove
+had been kneaded aside so that a blow given would be almost like one
+with the bare fist.
+
+"None of that skin-tight business here," said Bart.
+
+He pounded the glove until it was normal and then handed it back, not
+going to his own corner, however, until they had been fastened on
+Rabig's hands to his own satisfaction.
+
+"That cur can't play fair in anything," he remarked to Frank as he came
+back.
+
+The bell rang and the men came from their corners toward the center of
+the platform.
+
+Frank extended his hand in the customary greeting but Rabig refused to
+take it.  There was a stir in the audience.
+
+"Looks like a grudge fight," remarked one, with quickened interest.
+
+"It does on Rabig's part," assented his neighbor.  "But if it comes to
+that I'm betting on Sheldon to trim him."
+
+The boxers sparred for a moment, Frank cool and smiling, Rabig surly
+and furious.  Then Frank found an opening and landed a deft uppercut
+that shook Rabig from head to foot.
+
+He rushed at Frank like a mad bull but Frank cleverly side-stepped and
+countered with a left to the ear.  Of the two Rabig was the heavier and
+in Camport had won a reputation as a rough and tumble fighter.
+
+Stung by Frank's cleverly planted blows, he threw what little science
+he had to the winds and the next minute the two were at it, hammer and
+tongs.
+
+"I'll do you!" Rabig panted, as he slugged right and left, vainly
+endeavoring to get through Frank's guard.
+
+"Go as far as you like," retorted the latter, emphasizing the retort
+with a left jab that nearly lifted Rabig off his feet.
+
+The bell that announced the end of the round found Rabig winded by his
+furious endeavors.  But Frank, though breathing a little heavily, was
+serene and confident, as he returned to his corner.
+
+"I told you he was in dead earnest," said Bart, as his principal sat
+down on his stool for a minute's rest.  "Look out for fouls, Frank.
+He'll do anything to down you."
+
+In the round that followed, Bart's warning was amply justified.  Rabig
+in one of the clinches, as he leaned on Frank's shoulder, tried to bite
+and he butted continually.
+
+"Cut that out, Rabig," warned Frank in a low tone, after the latter had
+twice used his head as a battering ram.  "My patience won't last
+forever."
+
+"I'll get you yet!" gasped Rabig.
+
+Once more he drove his head at Frank's chin and the latter, now
+thoroughly aroused by the foul tactics, let fly his right and caught
+his burly adversary fairly on the point of the jaw.
+
+Down went Rabig like a shot.  Frank generously reached out his hand to
+help him to his feet, but Rabig struck it away and just here Corporal
+Wilson intervened.
+
+"That'll do," he commanded.  "We don't want any knockout.  Sheldon
+wins."
+
+Frank with a smile and wave of the hand stripped off his gloves and
+left the platform, to be pounded and mauled in exultation by his
+admiring comrades.
+
+Meanwhile, Rabig slunk away followed by hisses and jeers at the foul
+tactics that after all had only resulted in the beating he so richly
+deserved.
+
+"You trimmed him good, Frank," cried Tom exultantly.
+
+"You went around him like a cooper around a barrel," jubilated Billy.
+
+"I guess if you owed him anything, you've paid the score," chuckled
+Bart.  "I've been aching for months to see that bully get what was
+coming to him."
+
+"I didn't want to hurt him," said Frank, good-naturedly.  "But when he
+came butting at me that way and even trying to bite, I simply had to
+lace him.  But even now I haven't a bit of grudge against the fellow."
+
+"He'll sing small after this," prophesied Tom.  "But all the same,
+Frank, keep your weather eye open.  He'll do you a mischief if he ever
+gets the chance."
+
+It was just after the noonday mess the next day, and the boys were
+chatting in front of the mill, when Frank, looking carelessly down the
+road, gave a startled exclamation.
+
+"Look what's coming, fellows!" he cried.
+
+They came up all standing and looked in the direction indicated.
+
+"By the great horn spoon!" ejaculated Tom.  "Have I got the delirium
+tremens?"
+
+"It's a nightmare," declared Billy.
+
+Up the dusty road was coming the weirdest creation that the boys had
+ever seen.  It looked like a great hulking rhinoceros.  It moved along
+slowly and ponderously, as though it were straining under a burden too
+heavy to be borne.
+
+The sun reflected from its sides showed that it was coated with metal.
+There were openings in the armor through which the muzzles of machine
+guns protruded.  Around its huge wheels there passed what seemed to be
+a broad endless chain that formed a path on which the wheels traveled.
+There was no driver to be seen and it came lumbering along like a blind
+monster feeling its way.  But although its progress was leisurely it
+was sure, and the boys as they watched it gathered an impression of
+almost irresistible force.
+
+"I've read of the car of Juggernaut," muttered Tom as it came nearer,
+"and I guess this must be it."
+
+"It's going into the ditch!" exclaimed Bart, as the monster gave a
+lurch into a deep depression at the side of the road.
+
+"It'll topple over sure!" prophesied Billy.
+
+But the prophecy proved false for the car righted itself from an almost
+impossible angle and came on as doggedly as before.
+
+Just before it got to where the boys were standing it came to a halt, a
+door opened and a young fellow of about their own age leaped out.
+
+He was strong and well built, with hair that crisped in curly waves
+close to his head and a pair of merry blue eyes that spoke of fun and
+good fellowship.
+
+"Hello, fellows!" he exclaimed, waving the formality of an introduction
+and wiping the perspiration from his forehead.  "My, but it's hot in
+there!"
+
+They crowded round him in eager curiosity.
+
+"Where did you dig up this rig?" asked Billy.  "Is it real or is it all
+a hideous dream?"
+
+The newcomer laughed.
+
+"You don't seem to be stuck on my pet," he grinned.  "I'll admit she
+isn't much on beauty, but when she comes to scrapping she's a holy
+terror."
+
+"She looks it," agreed Frank.  "I'd hate to have her bump up against me
+when she was in a bad temper."
+
+"That's the way the Huns feel," laughed their new acquaintance.  "They
+haven't any use for tanks.  You ought to see the way we got 'em in the
+battle of the Somme."
+
+"Were you there?" asked Tom.
+
+"Very much there," was the answer.  "This old rascal of mine was right
+in the thick of it."
+
+"You English have all the luck!" exclaimed Bart enviously.
+
+"English nothing," replied the operator.  "I'm an American just as you
+are.  My name is Stone, Will Stone, and I was born in Detroit."
+
+"Bully!" exclaimed Frank, and there was a general handshake and
+introductions all around.
+
+"But how did you get over here before the rest of us?" queried Bart.
+
+"Well," laughed Will, "you know Windsor in Canada is just across the
+river from Detroit and I slipped across and enlisted with the Canadian
+troops.  I knew a good deal about automobiles--everybody in Detroit
+does, because there are so many plants there--and when these tanks were
+ready for use and they called for volunteers I was Johnny-on-the-spot."
+
+"You chose a hot branch of the service, all right," commented Tom.  "If
+you were looking for excitement I guess you got it."
+
+"You're a good guesser," grinned Will.  "When you're climbing over
+trenches and crashing through walls and rooting up trees, with bullets
+pattering against the sides like hailstones on a roof, the fellow who
+can't get enough excitement out of it is pretty hard to please.  But
+come along, you fellows, and I'll show you over the old shebang if you
+care to look at it."
+
+They needed no second invitation, and for the next half hour there was
+a volley of questions and answers as they examined the offensive and
+defensive qualities of the grim monster that had carried consternation
+into the German ranks.
+
+"Well, so long, fellows," said Will, when at last he climbed into the
+tank and set its unwieldy bulk in motion.  "Here's hoping that we meet
+again soon."
+
+"In Berlin, if not sooner!" Frank shouted after him.
+
+A few days later one of the French colonels visited the camp.  After
+his formal reception by the American officers he made a tour of
+inspection, going among the men, looking over the barracks and asking
+innumerable questions.
+
+There was an absence of pomp and ceremony about him that was
+characteristic of the French officers who, perhaps more than those of
+any other nation, live on terms of simple comradeship with their men,
+and the boys, to use Billy's phrase, "cottoned to him" at once.
+
+Unfortunately he knew little English and as the boys knew still less
+French, conversation was halting and difficult.  The officer's delight
+then, can be imagined when, on addressing a question to Frank, the
+latter responded in French as pure as his own.
+
+"Why, my boy," said Colonel Pavet, "you speak as though you were a son
+of France."
+
+"A stepson, perhaps," replied Frank, smilingly.  "For my mother is a
+daughter of France!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+A PROMISE OF HELP
+
+There was a gratified exclamation from Colonel Pavet, and a new light
+came into his eyes.  The magic name of France had abolished for the
+moment all distinctions of rank.  The officer reached out his hand and
+took Frank's in a hearty grasp.
+
+"Then you are fighting for two countries," he ejaculated.
+
+"Yes," laughed Frank.  "I'm luckier than most of the fellows."
+
+"In what part of the country was your mother born?" asked the colonel
+with interest.
+
+"In Auvergne," Frank replied.
+
+"In Auvergne," repeated the officer, with vivacity.  "Why I come from
+that part of the country myself.  What was your mother's family name?"
+
+"De Latour," said Frank.
+
+"There is another coincidence," cried the colonel.  "I know the family
+well.  Their estate was only a few miles south of ours.  Her father was
+an old comrade in arms and served in the same regiment with me when we
+were stationed in Algiers.
+
+"Many's the time we've ridden and messed and fought together against
+the Bedouins.  He's dead now," he continued, a slight shade crossing
+his face.  "How proud he would have been were he alive to know that his
+grandson was fighting for France.
+
+"Let me see," he went on.  "I've been a long time away from Auvergne
+but it seems to me that when I was last there, I heard some talk of
+trouble in settling his estate--some lawsuit or other, that tied the
+property up.  Do you know anything about it?"
+
+"Yes," replied Frank.  "My mother has been worrying over it for some
+time past.  She was just about to sail for France to see about it when
+the war broke out."
+
+He rapidly sketched the details of the legal trouble with which his
+mother had made him familiar.  The officer listened attentively and
+with marked sympathy.
+
+"It is too bad," said Colonel Pavet.  "I will see what I can do.  I
+have a good many friends in Auvergne and there are many, too, who honor
+the name and memory of De Latour and would do all in their power to
+help his daughter.
+
+"And when I tell them that their daughter's son is fighting on our soil
+they will redouble their efforts.  Count on me, my boy.  This terrible
+war may delay matters but I will not forget."
+
+The too parted then, leaving Frank with his heart beating faster at the
+thought of what might come from this most unexpected meeting.
+
+Now he would have something to write home to his mother that would
+thrill her heart.  That very night the letter should be written, the
+letter that was so eagerly awaited, always, in that lonely house at
+Camport, but that this time would receive even a more joyous welcome
+than usual.
+
+What a strange twist of fate it would prove if this trip to France,
+undertaken in a spirit of pure patriotism, should reap a double reward
+in lifting the burden that had weighed upon his mother's heart for
+years!
+
+One day a sham battle had been planned that embraced a front several
+miles in length and Frank's company was detailed to take up a position
+in a wood at the extreme left of the line.
+
+The boys welcomed the assignment, for it was to carry them into a
+section of the country that had up to now been unfamiliar to them, and
+it afforded a diversion from the ordinary drill of the training camp.
+
+They set off in high spirits after a hearty breakfast, and after a hike
+of four miles reached the bit of woodland where they were supposed to
+await the attack of the enemy.
+
+"Gee!" exclaimed Frank, as he filled his lungs with the balsam of the
+woods, "this is great.  It's enough just to be alive on a glorious
+morning like this."
+
+"It's a little bit of Eden," declared Bart, as he looked about him.
+"Listen to those birds singing.  If it weren't for the boom of cannon
+off there you wouldn't know there was such a thing as war in the world."
+
+"Yes," chimed in Tom, "but there was a snake in Eden, and there's
+another one in the world now, that's got to be scotched before the
+world can rest in peace."
+
+"Well, these woods have escaped so far," said Billy, as he looked
+around at the noble elms and birches.
+
+"Yes," assented Bart, "and I guess they're safe.  The German tide has
+come a good way into France, but I have a hunch that it's about spent
+its force."
+
+"If the Huns get here they'll have to come over our dead bodies," said
+Tom.
+
+It was some time before, in the plan for the sham battle, the enemy was
+expected to approach this copse of woods, and, with sentries posted, to
+detect and give warning of an approach, the rest of the men had been
+permitted to break ranks and do as they pleased.  Some had thrown
+themselves on the ground in all sorts of sprawling attitudes, others
+were smoking and chatting together, while still others wandered to the
+edge of the woods and gazed over the broad plateau that stretched for
+more than a mile to the left of the woods.  The sky was cloudless and
+the sun was shining brightly.
+
+The monotonous boom of the distant guns, sounding like the roar of
+waves upon a beach, kept up unceasingly, but the boys had got so used
+to it that they scarcely noticed it.
+
+But suddenly, among these bass notes came another sound, or series of
+sounds, sharp, shrill, metallic, which they had already learned to
+identify as the popping of anti-aircraft guns.
+
+"That sounds as though they had sighted one of the Hun aeroplanes,"
+commented Frank.
+
+"More likely it's part of the practice," remarked Tom, carelessly.
+
+"Look at those shrapnel puffs over there," cried Bart, pointing toward
+the sky.
+
+High up in the air, following one another in quick succession, were
+light, bluish streaks, that after reaching an enormous height, suddenly
+burst in a cloud of white.
+
+"They're certainly firing at something," remarked Billy, "but for the
+life of me I don't see what it is."
+
+"I do," cried Bart.  "Look! just at the edge of that fleecy cloud.
+It's so white you can hardly tell it from the cloud itself."
+
+They strained their eyes in the direction where Bart was pointing.
+High up in the air, miles, it seemed, was a long, silver streak, shaped
+like an immense cigar.  At that height it seemed almost to hang in the
+atmosphere, so gliding and imperceptible was its motion.  And yet the
+boys knew that it was really shooting along with the speed of an
+express train.
+
+"A Zeppelin!" they shouted, in chorus.
+
+"A super-Zeppelin, or I miss my guess," observed Frank.  "Look at the
+size of it."
+
+"Oh, if the guns could only reach it!" exclaimed Bob.
+
+"No such luck," groaned Billy, "it's too far up.  See! the shrapnel
+puffs are half a mile below it."
+
+"It's on its way back to the German lines," remarked Frank, "and I
+guess there's nothing to stop its getting there."
+
+"Been on a baby killing trip to Paris, I suppose," said Tom, bitterly.
+
+"More likely London, judging from the direction," estimated Billy.
+
+They watched the monster as it sailed swiftly on, until it was lost to
+sight.
+
+"I'd have given a year of my life to have seen that thing brought
+down," said Bart.  "Can't you see the crew of it gloating over the
+women and children they've killed, and boasting about it when they get
+back to their lines?"
+
+"Well, you know the Indians used to scalp women and children just as
+eagerly as they did men," remarked Billy, "and those Boches can give
+the Indians cards and spades and beat them out."
+
+They were about to go back to the grove, with one last regretful look
+at the sky, when an exclamation from Frank brought them to a sudden
+halt.
+
+"There's another one," he cried, pointing to the distant horizon.  Even
+as he spoke a second Zeppelin came plainly into view, following in the
+wake of the first, but with greatly diminished speed.
+
+"Great Scott!" exclaimed Bart, "there must be a fleet of them!"
+
+"That one hasn't got off scot free, either," said Frank, his keen eye
+noting the apparent distress of the giant airship, as it moved
+uncertainly and unevenly, like a ship laboring in a storm.  "By Jove,
+fellows, I believe it's coming down!  Quick! get under the cover of
+these trees!"
+
+Lower and lower, like a bird with a broken wing, the Zeppelin came
+toward the earth, while the boys watched it in breathless excitement.
+
+Whether the Zeppelin could go no further, and sank despite itself, or
+whether its commander, looking at that broad plateau, and seeing no
+sign of life upon it, had decided to make a landing, quickly repair his
+injured machinery, and then rise again to seek refuge behind his own
+lines, the boys could not tell.  But whatever the reason, not many
+minutes had passed before it became apparent that the airship was
+coming down, inevitably, right in front of them.
+
+The word had been passed quickly all through the woods, and the whole
+company was on the alert.
+
+"Ready for action, men," commanded the lieutenant.
+
+With rifles in hand, and all their senses keenly on the alert, the
+soldiers waited for the coming of their prey.
+
+With a perceptible jar the airship struck the ground, and at the same
+instant her crew swarmed out and dropped over the sides.
+
+"Charge!" shouted the American lieutenant, and out from the woods the
+army boys went with a rush.
+
+The astounded Germans were taken so utterly by surprise that they stood
+for a moment as though paralyzed.  Then their commander barked out a
+sharp order, and two of the men leaped on board and made for the
+engines.
+
+Crack! went the lieutenant's revolver, and as the bullet whistled past
+the ears of the foremost man both Germans came to a stop.
+
+"Forward, men, and surround them, but don't shoot unless you have to,"
+was the next order, and an instant later the German crew were ringed
+about with rifles whose ominous muzzles threatened to mow them down at
+the first false move.
+
+The German officer had started to draw a pistol, but seeing the
+uselessness of this, he shoved it back into its holster and shrugged
+his shoulders.  He was trapped.  The game was up.  He raised his hands
+in signal of surrender.
+
+Another command from the lieutenant, and the crew were disarmed.  A
+certain number of the men were detailed to guard them, and others were
+placed in charge of the airship.
+
+The boys were wild with delight at the rich prize that had fallen so
+unexpectedly into their hands.
+
+"We've had two great days, boys!" exclaimed Frank, "if we never have
+any others.  The day we saw the submarine potted, and the day we nabbed
+the Zeppelin."
+
+"Glory, hallelujah!" crowed Bart.  "And to think we've got it in such
+good shape.  The Allies have been crazy for a long time to find out
+just what new wrinkles the Germans have got in the way of machinery and
+other features in their latest Zeppelins.  Maybe the engineers won't
+come running when they learn of this!"
+
+"And maybe there won't be joy in Paris and London and Washington!"
+jubilated Tom.
+
+"And perhaps the Huns won't gnash their teeth and tear their hair!"
+chuckled Billy.  "Oh, boy, we sure had luck when they sent us out here
+this morning."
+
+"That German officer is a hard loser," remarked Frank.  "See that scowl
+on his face.  A thundercloud has nothing on him.  He's sore through and
+through."
+
+The boys would have liked nothing better than to have had a chance to
+explore the Zeppelin and see the many interesting and novel features
+embodied in it, but their hopes in this direction were doomed to be
+disappointed.  The lieutenant was inflexible in his resolve to have
+absolutely nothing on the captured airship disturbed until the
+government experts arrived to inspect it, and sorely against their
+wills the boys were forced to content themselves with an exterior view
+of the wonderful fabric.
+
+The German officer, being utterly without means of escape, had not been
+put under the custody to which his crew had been subjected.  He stood
+stiffly by the side of the American lieutenant, awaiting the
+disposition that the latter might choose to make of him.
+
+The American officer sought to question him, but found his prisoner,
+although able to speak English, inclined to reply only in
+monosyllables.  The courteous persistence of the American, however, had
+its effect, and the German became more communicative, but he balked at
+telling where he had been, or what his raid had accomplished.  After
+answering a number of questions of lesser importance, the German
+himself became the questioner.
+
+"To what enemy have I surrendered?" he queried.
+
+"To a regiment of the United States Army," replied the lieutenant.
+
+A bewildered look came into the prisoner's eyes.
+
+"You mean British Army," he suggested, by way of correction.
+
+"I said United States," said the lieutenant, briefly.
+
+The puzzled look deepened.
+
+"Impossible!" he exclaimed.  "There is no United States Army in France."
+
+Despite himself, the American officer could hardly suppress a smile.
+
+"Just listen to him!" exclaimed Frank, who was within hearing distance.
+
+"Didn't I tell you the Germans would believe anything their generals
+told them?" replied Bart.
+
+"My, but this is rich!" chortled Tom.
+
+"I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't heard it," chuckled Billy, in
+a tone too subdued for the lieutenant to notice.
+
+"I assure you," said the lieutenant, "that there is an army of the
+United States in France, despite your unbelief.  Why should it seem so
+strange?"
+
+"But you couldn't possibly have gotten over here," persisted the
+prisoner.
+
+"Why not?" asked the American.
+
+"Because our U-boats would have stopped you," was the reply.
+
+"No use," murmured Frank to Bart.  "Nobody home."
+
+"Padded cell number nine hundred and ninety-nine," whispered Billy.
+
+It was of no use to argue against such credulity, and the lieutenant
+gave it up.
+
+The prisoners were marched back to camp, where the news of their coming
+had preceded them.  It created a great sensation, and was the main
+topic of conversation for many days thereafter.
+
+"It's been a red letter day," remarked Bart that night, as he prepared
+to climb into his bunk.
+
+"You bet it has," agreed Frank.  "We bagged a Zeppelin!"
+
+Two days after these momentous events, a stir of expectation ran
+through the camp.  Evidently some important move was in prospect.  What
+it was, the rank and file did not know, but rumors and conjectures ran
+riot.
+
+"There's something big coming, boys," said Frank, one night after
+supper.
+
+"That's plain enough," agreed Bart.  "But I'd give a lot to know just
+what it is."
+
+"The corporal gave me a private tip," replied Frank.  "He didn't go
+very far into it, but from what he hinted I have a hunch that none of
+us will go to bed to-night."
+
+"What?" they cried, in chorus.
+
+"That's what," returned Frank.  "But of course it may be a false alarm.
+Wilson himself wasn't any too sure."
+
+An hour later the bugle blew, but this call was not for "lights out."
+It was the command to "fall in."
+
+Sudden as it was, the high state of discipline the men had reached was
+shown by the fact that there was no confusion.  As precisely as veteran
+soldiers they fell into line by companies and platoons and waited for
+the order "Forward, march!"
+
+The order was not long in coming, and as quietly as ghosts, with no
+band to lead them, the regiment swung into step and started off.
+
+"We're on our way to the front," whispered Frank to Bart, who marched
+on his right.
+
+"Off to the trenches!" agreed Bart.  "Well, I'm glad the waiting time
+is over.  Now, we'll have a chance to show what kind of soldiers we
+are."
+
+For three whole hours the march went on without a halt.  The night was
+clear although there was no moon.  As the ground was dry and springy
+the going was good.
+
+During that last hour the signs had multiplied that they were
+approaching the scene of battle.  They passed by bits of woodland where
+every leaf and twig had been stripped from the trees by shell fire,
+leaving only the scarred and ghastly trunks.
+
+They went through villages, or what had once been villages, but were
+now only heaps of crumbling stone with, here and there, a shaky wall
+left standing.
+
+They had to watch their footing more and more to avoid falling into
+craters where the ground had been torn up by shells.  There was no
+beauty in that part of fertile France that had once been like a "garden
+of the Lord."
+
+War had breathed upon it, blighting and blasting every living thing,
+except the dauntless spirit of the people who were fighting and would
+fight to the last gasp in defense of liberty and civilization.
+
+At last they reached a line of sentinels by whom they were greeted, not
+with challenges, but with exclamations of delight and welcome.
+
+A little further on they came to a great gash in the earth that
+stretched in either direction like a huge black, zigzag blot.
+
+They had reached the trenches!
+
+But they did not stop there.  Onward they went again, past another line
+of trenches.
+
+"Gee! we must be going to the first line of trenches!" whispered Bart.
+
+"That's what!" answered Frank.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+FACING THE HUN
+
+Just this side of one of the lines of trenches the regiment halted at
+the word of the commander.  Then it stood at attention and presented
+arms while from out the trenches came an endless line of men who had
+held that trench for France and now were yielding their place to the
+ardent young soldiers of the sister republic across the sea.
+
+There was a strong impulse to cheer on both sides, but that might have
+betrayed to the enemy the change that was taking place in that sector
+of the line, and this for strategic reasons, it was desirable to avoid.
+
+Soon the last of the war-worn veterans was lost in the darkness.  Then,
+with infinite caution the boys of the old Thirty-seventh marched into
+the trenches, guided only by lanterns that waved low before them like
+so many fireflies.
+
+So perfectly the movement had been planned, so carefully had been
+mapped out in advance the exact location that each unit of the command
+was to occupy, that, within an hour after the substitution had been
+made, the entire regiment was placed, and, apart from those detailed
+for duty, was sound asleep!
+
+Curiosity ran riot when the army boys woke in their unfamiliar
+surroundings.  At last they had reached the trenches, that magic word
+that they had heard again and again in the daily discussions of the
+last three years, and they studied every detail of their new
+surroundings with the keenest interest and zest.
+
+Here they were to live, here some of them, beyond a question, were to
+die.  The thought was sobering, and on that first day there was little
+of the gaiety and jest that had marked their life in the camps behind.
+
+"Well, Bart, old scout, we're in for it now," said Frank, after
+breakfast, as he placed his hand on his friend's shoulder.
+
+"In for fair," responded Bart.
+
+"We're up against the real thing," added Billy.  "We had a little taste
+of trench life down in Mexico, but most of the life was in the open.
+This is a different proposition."
+
+Just then a shell came screaming overhead and the boys involuntarily
+ducked.
+
+"That seems to prove it," said Tom.
+
+"Bad shooting though," remarked Frank, coolly.  "Fritz ought to have
+the range better by this time."
+
+"There isn't very much of that sort of thing going on just now,"
+remarked Corporal Wilson, who came along just then.  "This is what they
+call a 'quiet sector.'  The boys are just put here to be broken in and
+get used to the sight and sound of the shells.  This is a deaf and dumb
+asylum compared to what you'll get later on."
+
+"Job's comforter," murmured Bart.  "To hear the corporal talk you'd
+think this was a rest cure."
+
+In the hours of liberty allowed them the army boys explored the
+trenches for a long distance in either direction, and what they saw
+tended to upset a good many of the notions they had formed.
+
+In a vague way they had figured the trench to be not much else than a
+gigantic ditch.  They found it to be an underground city.
+
+There was a bewildering labyrinth of passages branching off in every
+direction.  There were spacious rooms, fitted up in homely comfort,
+some with pictures on the walls and rugs upon the floors.
+
+There were shower baths and laundries, rude in construction but
+efficient in operation.  The sleeping quarters of the men consisted
+chiefly of bunks, rising in tiers, though in some cases, cots were used.
+
+There was an apparently endless series of communicating trenches with
+the listening posts in advance of the main line.  There were telephone
+wires and electric lights.
+
+"The moles have got nothing on us," remarked Tom, as he noted the vast
+extent of these subterranean passages.
+
+"It's like the catacombs of Rome," put in Billy.  "The only difference
+is that those contain dead men while we're very much alive."
+
+"Knock wood," counseled Bart.  "We wouldn't be very long if the Boches
+had their way."
+
+Along the side of the main trench, facing the enemy was a narrow
+platform on which the men stood who were on watch.  A series of
+cunningly contrived loopholes enabled them to look over at the enemy
+trenches without themselves being seen.
+
+Sand bags were piled on the top of the trench in numbers sufficient to
+stop the flight of a bullet or even the impact of a shell.
+
+A series of steps led up to the top and the boys reflected as they
+looked at them that before long their feet would be planted there when
+the order should be given to go "_over the top_" and charge across the
+intervening space to meet the enemy.
+
+The silent men standing on watch, gripping their muskets, their eyes
+peering through the loopholes, seemed like so many statues.
+
+Each had his gas mask ready to clap on at an instant's notice, for when
+that deadly poison should be wafted over the trench, one second of time
+might mean all the difference between life and death.
+
+Before the day was over Frank and his comrades had replaced this line
+of sentinels.  They peered curiously across to the German trench from
+which they were separated by not more than two hundred yards.
+
+There was absolutely nothing to be seen except the line of sand bags
+that they knew marked the positions of the enemy.  Nothing broke the
+monotonous expanse of shell-torn earth.
+
+They had an uncanny feeling as though they were the only living
+creatures left in the world.
+
+"It looks as though all the Germans had gone back to Berlin," remarked
+Frank in an undertone.
+
+"Does it?" said the corporal grimly.  "Give me your hat."
+
+He took the hat that Frank extended and lifted it above the parapet on
+the point of a bayonet.
+
+Zip! came a bullet, missing the helmet by a hair and thudding into one
+of the sand bags.
+
+"Take it all back," said Frank as he resumed his hat.  "They're on the
+job!"
+
+A week passed by with only two casualties on the American side, for the
+sector was indeed a quiet one.  But certain signs of a projected
+movement on the part of the enemy had made the American officers
+uneasy, and one day Corporal Wilson called Frank apart.
+
+"Sheldon," he said, "Captain Baker has ordered me to take a squad of
+men on the first dark or foggy night for patrol duty in No Man's Land.
+I want you, Raymond, Bradford and Waldon to go with me."
+
+"Good," said Frank, promptly.  "We'll be ready."
+
+He sought out his comrades and eagerly imparted the information.  They
+received it with delight.
+
+"Bully!" cried Bart.
+
+"Best news I've heard since Hector was a pup!" chortled Billy.
+
+"Here's hoping we'll slip one over on Fritz!" chuckled Tom, gleefully.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+IN NO MAN'S LAND
+
+It was a misty, muddy night upon which the reconnoitering party,
+including Frank, Bart, Billy and Tom, was sent out under Corporal
+Wilson, with orders to get as close as possible to the enemy's line and
+learn all they could regarding their positions.
+
+This included information in regard to the general direction of the
+enemy trenches, the extent and strength of his barbed wire
+entanglements and, if possible, the approximate force with which the
+trenches were manned.
+
+Of course, this order involved taking pretty long chances, but the
+picked men sent out did not give much thought to that side of the
+question.  By now it was all, not only a part of the day's work to
+them, but the excitement of such an expedition was, in truth, something
+of a relief from the growing monotony of trench life.
+
+They left their own trenches with the least possible sound and crept
+cautiously forward toward the enemy defences.  The night was heavy and
+starless, an excellent one for their project.
+
+The soft earth deadened their footsteps and they slipped forward like a
+company of ghosts, hardly a sound breaking the stillness save the
+distant roar of the heavy guns that caused the ground to quiver and
+tremble under their feet.
+
+The mist enveloping them began to grow denser minute by minute and
+before they had gone more than a hundred yards it was with the greatest
+difficulty that they kept from becoming separated.
+
+It was an uncanny experience for the young, almost untried soldiers,
+and the Camport boys were excited, and each eager to prove himself
+worthy of having been chosen for the work.
+
+Suddenly Frank thought he heard a subdued sound on his right and
+instinctively stopped a moment to locate it more definitely.
+
+In that second his comrades, who apparently had heard nothing, were
+swallowed up in the thickening fog.  Frank's impulse was to hasten
+after them but he had hardly taken a step forward when he was again
+halted by a repetition of the noise he had heard before.
+
+He dared not call out to his comrades as he knew that such a cry would
+betray them all in case they were near the enemy trenches.  His next
+thought was to return to his own lines, but the sound he had heard,
+surprisingly like the low-pitched gutturals of a German voice, made him
+unwilling to go back without investigating the matter further.
+Besides, here was the beginning of an adventure after his own heart,
+and he thought with a quickening pulse of the satisfaction that would
+be his if he could, unaided, gather valuable information and take it
+back to his commanding officer.
+
+This reflection decided him and slowly and with infinite caution he
+stole in the direction from which the sounds seemed to come.
+
+He had not gone far when his first impression was verified.  Through
+the mist he heard distinctly the subdued sound of voices.  Creeping on
+still farther as quietly and stealthily as a jungle animal, he could
+finally catch the articulation in the voices, and he knew the language
+spoken was German.
+
+"I must be mighty near their entanglements by this time," he thought
+excitedly.  "If I can only get through them I ought to be able to hear
+something.  Here goes for a try at it anyway."
+
+He dropped to hands and knees, regardless of the sticky mud, and wormed
+his way along, one hand outstretched feeling for the wire that he knew
+must be close.  Sure enough he had not gone ten feet when his hand came
+in contact with the wire.  He dropped flat on the ground and carefully
+drew his wire cutters from his belt.  Cautiously he nipped a section
+out of the lowest strand and crawled beneath.  He knew that he would
+soon come to a second line, and when he reached it he cut it in the
+same way he had the first, and then cut a third and a fourth.
+
+"That's probably the last fence," he thought, nor was he mistaken.
+
+He was now close to the enemy's trench and could hear the subdued
+murmur of voices.  Above these came every now and then a sharp word of
+command and the click of gun mechanisms being inspected together with
+other sounds indicating a state of bustle and preparation.
+
+To Frank lying prone on the miry ground, these sounds conveyed a very
+definite and significant message.
+
+"They're up to something sure as shooting!" he thought.  "I'll bet
+they're preparing for an attack on our trenches!  They're all as busy
+as bees!"
+
+He lay quiet a minute longer until the sounds of preparation increased
+to such an extent that he felt sure the Germans would soon be on the
+move.
+
+"About time for me to hunt cover," he thought with a grin that even his
+perilous position could not repress.  "The sooner I get out of this and
+warn our men the better it will be."
+
+With this thought in mind he turned cautiously about and had started
+back when suddenly he saw something that made his heart lose a beat.
+
+All over the wire entanglements that lay across his path of escape long
+sparks were leaping and hissing with a subdued crackling sound like the
+snapping of a wood fire.  The Germans had electricified their wires in
+the hope of entrapping any scouting party of Americans who might chance
+to penetrate them!
+
+Now indeed Frank found himself in a terrible predicament.  He knew that
+in the maze of wires he could hardly hope to find the place where he
+had entered, and he was sure that with the heavy current in the wires
+it would be certain death to touch them with his clippers.  On the
+other hand he knew that the current would be shut off only a minute or
+so before the Boches left their trenches to attack.  He would hardly
+have time to cut his way out before being discovered and shot.
+
+However his only chance seemed to be to lie still and await
+developments.  This he did, resolving to make a dash the second the
+current was cut off.
+
+As he lay there his ears caught the sound of measured footsteps
+approaching him.
+
+"It's a sentry!" flashed through his mind.  His hand flew to the
+bayonet at his side and he prepared to strike quick and hard.
+
+But then another thought came to him.  There must be a way through the
+entanglements that the Germans used.  If he could capture the sentry he
+might be able to make him act as a guide.
+
+It was a chance--and a desperate chance.  Would the sentry prove to be
+alert and resourceful?  Would his love of the Fatherland, or at least
+his training that the individual must be always subservient to the
+government, cause him to give the alarm at the expense of his personal
+safety?  Or would he be slow to think and act, and would the very
+training, having undermined his self-reliance, make him yield to the
+quick intelligence and the poise that freedom had given to the American?
+
+Noiselessly he shifted his hand to his revolver and drew it forth.  He
+knew that it would be fatal to risk a shot, but he grasped the barrel
+of the weapon and as the heavy footsteps came abreast of him leaped to
+his feet and brought the butt down with stunning force on the head of
+the dim stolid figure that loomed through the mist.
+
+The man dropped without a cry but Frank listened anxiously to judge if
+the sound of his fall had reached the trenches.  Apparently it had not,
+and satisfied of this the young American turned his attention to the
+inert figure at his feet.
+
+Presently the man stirred and then in a dazed fashion started to
+struggle to his feet.  Quick as lightning the cold muzzle of Frank's
+revolver was pressed against the German's neck speaking a language that
+all men understand.  The soldier stood quite still and Frank felt that
+the man, unstrung by the unexpected attack, would not risk death by
+giving an alarm.
+
+He was at a loss to convey a command to the German to show him the way
+out through the barbed wire.  He knew little of the German language.
+But it occurred to him that possibly the German could speak English.
+
+"Show me the way out of this," he commanded, speaking very slowly.  "Do
+you understand?"
+
+"_Yah, yah,_" mumbled the German.  "I vill show you, only don't shoot.
+Dis way.  Follow me."
+
+"I'll follow you and mighty close too," Frank assured him.  "One false
+move and you'll never make another."
+
+The German made no reply but crawled sullenly through the mud, Frank
+following with the muzzle of the gun pressing the man's leg.
+
+Soon the German paused at what appeared to be a sort of gate but would
+have seemed like any part of the fence to one not acquainted with it.
+After a moment's fumbling the gate swung open and captor and captive
+crawled through.  In the same way they got through the other lines of
+wire.  Frank was once more in the open and the proud possessor of a
+prisoner besides.
+
+"Forward march!" commanded the young American.  "We will now visit
+those pigs of Yankees you fellows are so fond of talking about.  I know
+they will be glad to see you."
+
+The big German only hunched his shoulders and went on doggedly.  In a
+little while they were near the American trenches and after answering
+the sentry's challenge they clambered down.
+
+Frank was met with a wild rush by Bart, Billy and Tom, who had been
+almost crazy with anxiety because of his failure to return.
+
+"Where have you been, Frank?" shouted Bart, "and where did you get the
+Boche?"
+
+"I'll tell you when I get back, fellows," promised Frank.  "Take care
+of this Hun.  I've got to report right away.  I think the Huns are
+going to attack."
+
+He hurried away and made his report.
+
+"You've done well, very well," declared Captain Baker.  "And if the
+enemy attacks, as you think likely, they will find us ready for them.
+You may return to your company."
+
+Frank saluted and hastened back.  Orders were issued, and soon every
+man was at his post, strung up to the highest pitch of excitement and
+expectancy.  They strained their eyes through the baffling fog but for
+a while could see or hear nothing.
+
+Then suddenly a white shaft of light stabbed through the fog and
+piercing the damp folds revealed row after row of helmeted figures
+moving toward them with a deliberation and menacing weight that might
+well have struck terror to hearts less stout than theirs!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+A GALLANT EXPLOIT
+
+Crouched, tense, ready for the word, the American lads faced the foe.
+A thrill of impatience ran through them as the enemy came nearer.
+
+Were they to wait there, until that grey wave overwhelmed them, pouring
+into the trenches like a surging flood?
+
+The strain of waiting was becoming almost unbearable.
+
+The captain shouted a command, and up they scrambled like hounds freed
+from the leash.  But just as their leader reached the top he fell
+headlong, stricken by a bullet.
+
+For a moment the men waited, uncertain, hardly knowing what to do.
+Frank sensed the hesitation and like lightning he acted.
+
+It was no time to consider rank with that grey mass surging on.  Above
+the noise his voice rang out like a trumpet.
+
+"Come on, boys!" he shouted.  "Over the top and at them!"
+
+At the same instant he leaped forward and his comrades followed.  On
+they rushed like an avalanche let loose.  They were at Yankee fighting
+pitch.
+
+All the pent-up rage that had been gathering for months leaped to the
+fore.  The fire that had stirred their ancestors at Bunker Hill and
+Gettysburg burst into flame.
+
+Wounds?  They scorned them.  Death?  They laughed at it!
+
+On they went like so many vikings.  Faster, faster, rushing, pouring
+onward--until with tremendous force they fell like a thunderbolt upon
+the advancing ranks.
+
+Into that grey mass they forced their way, shooting, thrusting,
+stabbing.  And when their guns were empty, or they could not use their
+bayonets, they grasped the weapons and swung them about their heads
+like flails.
+
+There was a red mist before their eyes and red patches on their tunics.
+Some of them fell but the others kept on stabbing, hacking, hewing
+their way into the solid mass until that mass, veteran, as it was,
+wavered and broke before the wild, irresistible charge.
+
+Slowly at first, then more swiftly, the enemy retreated, pursued to the
+very edge of their trenches by the American boys, who, having tasted
+blood, were not to be denied.
+
+They would have gone further but this was not in the plan of their
+commanders, for the enemy's guns had got the range and a murderous fire
+was being laid down.
+
+The enemy had had a trouncing that he would not soon forget.  The
+recall sounded, and the American boys turned back, reluctantly,
+gathering up their wounded comrades as they came.
+
+Frank had been separated from his chums in the wild melee, and his
+first thought as he neared the home trench was for their safety.  His
+relief was great when he found them, blackened, panting, their clothing
+riddled, but they themselves unharmed, except for a slight wound that
+Tom had received from a bullet that scarcely more than grazed his arm.
+
+Now that the reaction was upon them, they felt unspeakably weary, for
+nerve and brawn had been taxed to the utmost.  But in their eyes glowed
+the light of victory.  They had met the veteran troops of the Kaiser
+and given them a taste of Yankee mettle.
+
+It was their first battle and they had borne themselves like men.
+
+Once more in the trenches and Tom's slight wound attended to, they
+peered curiously over the scene of battle.  They shuddered as they
+looked, for there were still forms lying there that had not been there
+when the battle began.  Who of their own number had gone?  Who from
+that group of jolly, eager, vigorous young manhood with whom they had
+been living and training for weeks and months--those whom they had come
+to like and respect as they toiled and pleasured side by side in the
+camp and in the trenches?
+
+And yet, not one of those who had come back alive from that awful
+field, where had been left some of their comrades, but would have
+gladly given his own life that selfishness, arrogance, and brutality
+should not conquer and rule in this world.
+
+But they took comfort from the fact that despite their own losses,
+which had been numerous, the greater proportion of those still forms
+were German.
+
+The enemy's gun fire was still sending a rain of death across the
+intervening space and the American guns were answering with equal vigor.
+
+It seemed as though no living thing could endure on that infernal plain.
+
+Suddenly Frank's keen eyes detected a movement on the part of one of
+the apparently lifeless bodies and he gave a sharp exclamation.
+
+"Look there, Bart!" he said.  "There's a man still alive.  See how he's
+trying to get up on his elbow--and he's one of our men, too.  That is,
+he's French--I can tell by his uniform," he added in great excitement,
+as the light from a bursting star shell threw a ghastly radiance over
+the field.
+
+The next instant he was clambering up the side of the trench.
+
+"Frank!  Frank!" cried Bart desperately, clutching at him.  "What are
+you doing?  Where are you going?  It's certain death out there!"
+
+"I'm going, Bart," gritted Frank between his teeth as he tore away from
+his friend's grasp, and leaped over the top!
+
+An instant more and he was on his hands and knees, making his way
+toward the stricken man who was about twenty yards distant.
+
+Around him bullets rained.  A pain shot through his shoulder as though
+he had been stabbed by a red hot knife, but he kept on doggedly,
+reached the wounded man and tried to lift him to his feet.
+
+But the effort was futile for the man sank back with a groan.  Like a
+flash Frank's muscular arms lifted him, threw him over his shoulder and
+staggering, tripping, stumbling, yet somehow keeping his feet, he
+reached the edge of the trench.
+
+A dozen eager hands relieved him of his burden and then he himself
+tumbled in, to be caught by Bart and Billy.
+
+What happened in the next half hour, Frank scarcely knew.  The wound in
+his shoulder though not serious had bled freely, and his tremendous
+efforts had taxed his strength to the utmost.
+
+His surprise was great when, having had his wound attended to, he was
+ushered into the presence of the man he had saved.
+
+"Why, it is Colonel Pavet!" he gasped.  Of course the French military
+man was equally amazed.
+
+"It is fate!" he cried.  "Fate, nothing less, my brave boy!  How can I
+ever thank you!"
+
+"You don't have to thank me," returned Frank modestly.
+
+"But I shall," and the French colonel grasped the young soldier's hand
+tightly.  He was still very weak and spoke with difficulty.
+
+"I am glad it was you, Sir," remarked the army boy.
+
+"It is fate, I tell you," murmured the colonel.  "When I am well I
+shall tell you more.  I have heard from Auvergne, and all about the De
+Latour estate, which is in the courts.  You may have a fight to get
+your rights, but--I am your friend.  I shall fight for you and your
+mother."
+
+"Then you think my mother's chances are good?" questioned Frank eagerly.
+
+"I am certain of it," was the colonel's low reply.  Then he had to stop
+talking, by the doctor's orders.
+
+And what was done in the near future to recover the estate, and how
+Frank and his chum did their further duty as American soldiers, will be
+told in the next volume, to be entitled: "Army Boys in the French
+Trenches; Or, Hand to Hand Fights with the Enemy."
+
+When Frank came back to camp his friends hailed him as a veritable hero.
+
+"You're the goods!" cried Billy.
+
+"All wool and a yard wide!" came from Tom.
+
+"And American to the backbone, don't forget that!" added Bart.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Army Boys in France, by Homer Randall
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