Tom Slade with the Boys Over There | Page 9

"All right, go to sleep," said Tom, "and after a while if you don't wake
up I'll wake you. One of us has got to stay awake and listen. We can't
afford to take any chances."

Archibald Archer needed no urging and in a minute he was sprawled
upon the straw, dead to the world. The daylight was glinting cheerily
through the interstices of tangled vine over the opening when he awoke
with the heedless yawns which he might have given in his own beloved
Catskills.
"Don't make a noise," said Tom quickly, by way of caution. "We're in
the wine vat in Leteur's vineyard in Alsace, remember." It took Archer
a moment to realize where they were. They ate an early breakfast,
finding the simple odds and ends grateful enough, and then Tom took
his turn at a nap.
Throughout most of that day they sat with their knees drawn up,
leaning against the inside of the great vat, talking in hushed tones of
their plans. There was nothing else they could do in the half darkness
and the slow hours dragged themselves away monotonously. They had
lowered the door, but still left it open upon the merest crack and out of
this one or the other would peek at intervals, listening, heart in throat,
for the dreaded sound of footfalls. But no one came.
"I thought I hearrd a kind of rustling once," Archer said fearfully.
"There's a couple of cows 'way over in a field," said Tom; "they might
have made some sound."
After what seemed to them an age, the leaves over the opening seemed
bathed in a strange new light and glistened here and there.
"That crack faces the west," said Tom. "The sun's beginning to go
down."
"How do you know?" asked Archer.
"I always knew that up at Temple Camp. I don't know how I know. The
morning sun is different from the afternoon sun, that's all. I think it'll
set now in about two hours."
"I wonder when she'll come," Archer said.

"Not till it's good and dark, that's sure. She's got to be careful. Maybe
this place can be seen from the road, for all we know. Remember, we
didn't see it in the daylight."
"Sh-h-h," said Archer. "Listen."
From far, far away there was borne upon the still air a dull, spent,
booming sound at intervals.
"It's the fighting," whispered Tom.
"Wherre do you suppose it is?" Archer asked, sobered by this audible
reminder of their nearness to the seat of war.
"I don't know," Tom said. "I'm kind of mixed up. That feller in the
prison had a map. Let's see. I think Nancy's the nearest place to here.
Toul is near that. That's where our fellers are--around there. Listen!"
Again the rumbling, faint but distinctly audible, almost as if it came
from another world.
"The trenches run right through there--near Nancy," said Tom.
"Maybe it's ourr boys, hey?" Archer asked excitedly.
Tom did not answer immediately. He was thrilled at this thought of his
own country speaking so that he, poor fugitive that he was, could hear
it in this dark, lonesome dungeon in a hostile land, across all those
miles.
"Maybe," he said, his voice catching the least bit. "They're in the Toul
sector. A feller in prison told me. You don't feel so lonesome, kind of,
when you hear that----"
"Gee, I hope we can get to them," said Archer.
"What you got to do, you can do," Tom answered. "I wonder----"
"Sh-h. D'you hearr that?" Archer whispered, clutching Tom's shoulder.

"It was much nearerr--right close----"
They held their breaths as the reverberation of a sharp report died away.
"What was it?" Archer asked tensely.
"I don't know," Tom whispered, instinctively removing the short stick
and closing the trap door tight. "Don't move--hush!"
CHAPTER VI
PRISONERS AGAIN
"Do you hear footsteps?" Archer breathed.
Tom listened, keen and alert. "No," he said at last. "There's no one
coming."
"What do you s'pose it was?"
"I don't know. Sit down and don't get excited."
But Tom was trembling himself, and it was not until five or ten minutes
had passed without sound or happening that he was able to get a grip on
himself.
"Push up the door a little and listen," suggested Archer.
Tom cautiously pressed upward, but the door did not budge. "It's
stuck," he whispered.
Archer rose and together they pressed, but save for a little looseness the
door did not move.
"It's caught outside, I guess," said Tom. "Maybe the iron hasp fell into
the padlock when I put it down, huh?"
That, indeed, seemed to be the case, for upon pressure the door gave a
little at the corners, but not midway along the side where the fastening

was. Archer turned cold at the thought of their