The Khaki Boys Fighting to Win; or, Smashing the German LinesChase, Josephine
General
The Khaki Boys Fighting to Win; or, Smashing the German Lines
Chase, Josephine
World War, 1914-1918 -- Juvenile fiction
The days that followed Bob's capture were full of misery. He was packed
into a filthy railroad car with wounded and distressed men, and then,
by slow and jerky stages, he was taken away.
On this terrible journey to the German prison camp the poor captives
had scarcely anything to eat and almost no water to drink. Many were
ill, and several wounded, but no attention was given them, and their
wounds were not dressed.
At times Bob thought he would go mad at the sights he saw. His own
personal sufferings, once the pain in his head ceased, were not great;
but, in common with the others, he lacked food and water.
And finally, after many weary days they were taken from the train and
marched amid jeering lines of Germans to a wired stockade.
Bob dragged his unwilling feet into the stockade. He saw gathered
in the enclosure many sad-eyed and sorrowful American and Allied
prisoners. And then, to the great astonishment of Bob, he heard his own
name shouted.
Some one was running toward him--a ragged figure--and at first he did
not recognize who it was. Then the voice spoke again:
"Bob! Bob Dalton! And so they got you, too! Oh, but I'm glad to see
you----No, I'm not either--not here!"
Bob rubbed his eyes. For a moment he thought it was all a dream and
that this was but a phase of the explosion. Then as the face before
him became more plain through a mist that seemed to fill his eyes, Bob
gasped:
"Schnitz! If it isn't Franz Schnitzel!"
The long-sought, missing Brother had been found, and now the two Khaki
Boys had strangely met to be companions in misery.
CHAPTER XIX
IN SWIRLING WATERS
False-hearted and desperate as had been the two men who struck down
and rendered Roger and Jimmy senseless, their last inhuman act--the
tossing of the unconscious Khaki Boys over the cliff--defeated their
intentions. For as the Brothers fell into the deep water, the shock and
contact of it brought back their senses.
Roger and Jimmy splashed into the water at the same time, and at first
they sank deep into the swirling depths of the river, which ran at the
foot of the cliff, dotted here and there on its surface with black
rocks.
The blows that they had received on their heads had not, fortunately,
been sufficiently hard to make them unconscious for more than a few
minutes. It was as if a pugilist had received a "knockout" of a little
more than the usual severity.
The shock and chill of the water brought back the senses of the two
lads, and their first, natural instinct, in common with that of every
swimmer, was to hold their breath when they felt their heads submerged.
And then the boys came to the surface and struck out. Again this was
almost instinct. They were both good swimmers, and among the feats they
had practised at various times in summer pleasure camps had been to
swim across a lake fully clothed. This exploit stood the lads in good
stead now, though the garments they wore and the accoutrements they had
to carry very heavily handicapped them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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