Part 15 (1/2)

”Hmm--hang on to it.”

”You bet I'm going to. But maybe he wouldn't like now, even if I met him again--after what he knows----”

”Look here, Tom. You'll be sailing in a day or so and when you come back I'll probably be in Was.h.i.+ngton. Perhaps you'll wish to enlist over here soon. I'm going to give you a little b.u.t.ton, _kind of_, as you would say--to keep in your head. And this is it. Remember, there's only one person in the world who can disgrace Tom Slade, and that is Tom Slade himself.”

He slapped Tom on the shoulder, and they strolled up the dingy, crooked street, past the jumble of old brown houses, until it petered out in a plain where there was a little cemetery, filled with wooden crosses.

”Those poor fellows all did their bit,” said Mr. Conne.

Tom looked silently at the straight rows of graves. He seemed to be getting nearer and nearer to the war.

”How far is the front?” he asked.

”Not as far as from New York to Boston, Tom. Straight over that way is Paris. When you get past Paris you begin to see the villages all in ruins,--between the old front and the new front.”

”I've hiked as far as that.”

”Yes, it isn't far.”

”Do you know where our boys are--what part of it?”

”Yes, I know, but I'm not going to tell you,” Mr. Conne laughed. ”You'd like to be there, I suppose.”

For a few moments Tom did not answer. Then he said in his old dull way, ”I got a right to go now. I got a right to be a soldier, to make up for--_him_. The next time I get back here I'm going to join. If we don't get back for six weeks, then I'll be eighteen. I made up my mind now.”

Mr. Conne laughed approvingly and Tom gazed, with a kind of fascination, across the pleasant, undulating country.

”I could even hike it,” he repeated; ”it seems funny to be so near.”

But when finally he did reach the front, it was over the back fence, as one might say, and after such an experience as he had never dreamed of.

CHAPTER XIX

HE IS CAST AWAY AND IS IN GREAT PERIL

”They're more likely to spill the cup when it's empty,” said the deck steward, who was a sort of walking encyclopedia to Tom.

”I suppose that's because we haven't got such a good convoy going back,”

Tom said.

”That and high visibility. You see, the less there is in the s.h.i.+p, the higher she sets up in the water, and the higher she sets the better they can see her. We're in ballast and floating like a balloon. They get better tips about westbound s.h.i.+ps, too. All the French ports are full of German agents. They come through Switzerland.”

The first day out on the voyage homeward was very rough. At about dusk Tom was descending the steps from the bridge with a large tray when he saw several of the s.h.i.+p's people (whose time was pretty much their own on the westward trip) hurrying to the rail. One of them called to him, ”We're in for it;” but Tom was not alarmed, for by this time he was too experienced a ”salt” to be easily excited.

”You can see the wake!” someone shouted.