"Some of them wanted to put an end to me right then and there," Tom continued, "but others objected until they could get me a little further into Germany. They felt that the American forces were a little too near for comfort. Great Scott, how they hate the Americans! They fairly frothed at the mouth when they spoke of them. They blame us for their defeat. I've heard them say many a time that if it hadn't been for us they'd have been in Paris long ago and maybe in London." "I guess they were pretty near right at that," remarked Frank. "They surely were," agreed Billy. "Your Uncle Samuel came along just in the nick of time." "But go ahead, Tom," urged Bart. "What did they do with you after that?" "Just about the same, only more so," replied Tom, with a grin. "I was taken from one town to another until they finally settled down here. They seemed to find it a promising place to carry out their program of loot and murder. There was some pretty sharp street fighting here for a few days, and then the Spartacides got the upper hand and commenced killing some of their hostages. What you saw this morning has been going on for some time, only this was the biggest batch they have had yet. Going to make a grand wind-up as it were. They haven't spared the women, either. One of them was killed yesterday." "The hounds!" gritted Frank between his teeth. CHAPTER XXII WILL THE GERMANS SIGN? "It was a pitiful sight," said Tom, continuing the tale of his experience while a captive. "One of the women wanted to write a message of farewell to her husband and children. They gave her paper and pencil, and one of the guards offered his back to rest the paper on while she wrote. At about every sentence, the guard let himself fall down and the woman stumbled over him. It was great fun for the rest of the gang. They laughed as if it were a show. Oh, I tell you, the Huns are great humorists!" The eyes of the Army Boys flashed. "The unspeakable beasts!" cried Frank. "It would be a good thing if a plague came along and snuffed out the whole nation!" angrily exclaimed Bart. "It might be a good thing for the rest of the world," agreed Tom. "And, by the way, speaking of plague, I don't know but what it's on the way even now. In one or two of the places I've been in there's a mysterious something that's killing off the people like sheep. I've heard the guards talking about it. Nobody seems to know what it is and the doctors themselves are all at sea. Only yesterday one of the guards was taken with it. Big husky fellow he was too, and yet in a couple of hours he was dead. Seems to work as quickly as the cholera and to be just as deadly. I hope it doesn't hit the American Army." "It has hit it already," replied Frank soberly. "There's quite a lot of our boys in Coblenz who have died of it, and the officers are all up in the air about it. The medical staff is at its wit's end. I tell you, it's getting to be a mighty big problem."