Boy Scouts -- Juvenile fiction; Courage -- Juvenile fiction; Spy stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- England -- Juvenile fiction
Their chief difficulty lay in getting out of the house. True, Jack had
not been positively ordered not to go out again, but he knew that if his
father saw him, he would be ordered to stay in. And he had not the
slightest intention of missing any part of the finest adventure he had
ever had a chance to enjoy–not he! He was a typical English boy, full
of the love of adventure and excitement for their own sake, even if he
was the son of a clergyman. And now he showed Dick what they would have
to do.
"I used to slip out this way, sometimes," he said. "That was before I
was a scout. I–well, since I joined, I haven’t done it. It didn’t seem
right. But this is different. Don’t you think so, Dick?"
"I certainly do," said Dick. "Your pater doesn’t understand, Jack. He
thinks we’ve just found a mare’s nest, I fancy."
Jack’s route of escape was not a difficult one. It led to the roof of
the scullery, at the back of the house, and then, by a short and easy
drop of a few feet, to the back garden. Once they were in that, they
had no trouble. They could not be heard or seen from the front of the
house, and it was a simple matter of climbing fences until it was safe
to circle back and strike the road in front again. Jack led the way
until they came to the garage, which was at the end of the village, in
the direction of London. Their course also took them nearer to Bray
Park, but at the time they did not think of this.
"There’s where the wire starts from the garage, d’ye see?" said Jack,
pointing. "You see how easily we can follow it–it runs along those
poles, right beside the road."
"It seems to be all right here," said Dick.
"Oh, yes. They wouldn’t have cut it so near the village," said Jack.
"We’ll have to follow it along for a bit, I fancy–a mile or so, perhaps.
Better not talk much, either. And, I say, hadn’t we better stay in the
shadow? They must have been watching us before–better not give them
another chance, if we can help it," was Jack’s very wise suggestion.
They had traveled nearly a mile when Dick suddenly noticed that the
telephone wire sagged between two posts.
"I think it has been cut–and that we’re near the place, too," he said
then. "Look, Jack! There’s probably a break not far from here."
"Right, oh!" said Jack. "Now we must be careful. I’ve just thought,
Dick, that they might have left someone to watch at the place where they
cut the wire."
"Why, Jack?"
"Well, they might have thought we, or someone else, might come along to
find out about it, just as we’re doing. I’m beginning to think those
beggars are mighty clever, and that if we think of doing anything,
they’re likely to think that we’ll think of it. They’ve outwitted us at
every point so far."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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