JIMMY PERRIN stirred sleepily, turned over in bed, and opened one blue eye wide enough to peer across the room. The clock said seven fifteen, but the clock was probably wrong. He'd permit himself the luxury of a last snooze.
But he could not go to sleep again. The birds outside chirped too noisily, and the savory odors of a cooking breakfast tantalized his nostrils. His brain, which should have been at rest, kept prodding, "Any minute now your mother will tap on your door and say, 'Time to get up, Jamie boy!'"
That was her daily ritual at seven sharp each morning. To-day, if the clock was not playing pranks, something must be amiss. The worry nagged Jimmy enough to make him slither an arm to the chair over which his trousers were neatly draped. His watch, an exquisite hexagon masterpiece of the jeweler's craft, agreed with the clock. The time was now seven twenty-two.
"Queer!" muttered the boy. "Not being called will upset my forenoon schedule." He turned the program over in his mind, without much enthusiasm except for the last item. Breakfast. A walk with his tutor. The usual study period. Recitations. Then, if the minutes had not been lapped up too greedily, a drive in his sports roadster before lunch.
Jimmy permitted himself an unchecked yawn and a final satisfying stretch before he scrambled out of bed. After that, he was as methodical as a machine. He went through his daily dozen of morning exercises, counting a full eight for each arm and leg and body movement; he took his shower in the luxurious bathroom, starting with water as hot as he could bear and ending with an avalanche of icy cold; he rubbed himself dry with a huge Turkish towel, till his whole body glowed a pleasant, tingling pink. At that moment he felt he could easily lick his weight in wildcats ---maybe more.
As he dressed, after laying out a clean soft-collar shirt and fresh socks, the full-length mirror revealed a small but compactly built boy of seventeen, with measuring, inquiring eyes and sensitive, immature features. Jimmy scowled at the reflection. Was he never going to look like a man?
As he reached the lower hall, his father called to him from the library.
"Just a minute, son, before we have breakfast."
The box went into the library. Across the room, near a window, he saw his tutor, Mr. Elliott. His father motioned Jimmy to a chair and sat down himself at the desk.
It looked like the setting for some sort of inquisition, and Jimmy, trying desperately to recall any lapse of his that might warrant a reprimand, wriggled nervously. He couldn't remember any. Besides, Mr. Elliott wasn't the sort to snitch on a fellow. Before he'd complain to father, he'd thresh it out with Jimmy himself; he was that kind. Just the same, the two men were looking very solemn and serious.
It wasn't a forgotten holiday, was it? Jimmy stole a glance at the calendar. No-o. August 15, 1917.
"Son," began his father abruptly, "Mr. Elliott is leaving us."
"But he can't," the boy said impulsively, before he thought how it might sound. He went on lamely, "I mean, we aren't through with the preparations for my entrance examinations to Columbia."
Mr. Perrin nodded. "I understand. But Mr. Elliott tells me you can easily complete the courses by yourself. He has made out the necessary plans and outlines for you to follow. In any event, his decision to leave us is not wholly a personal one, as he sees it. It's a matter" --- he turned to the tutor for confirmation--- "a matter of duty. Mr. Elliott wishes to enlist for service in the war."
"But why?" demanded Jimmy, feeling somehow cheated at this threatened loss of the man who was preparing him for Columbia. "Why should you go to war, Mr. Elliott?"
The tutor wet his lips, as if confronted by an explanation that might prove beyond his powers to make clear. He hesitated a long time. When he did speak finally, it was to say a most peculiar thing.
"Because I am hungry for bread of adventure."
"Bread of adventure," repeated Jimmy. "What's that? I never heard of it."
Mr. Elliott studied him appraisingly. Even Jimmy's father allowed his forehead to pucker. It was as if these two men were probing him and wondering. The boy shifted uneasily in his chair.
"James, what was the best meal you ever ate in your life?" his tutor demanded suddenly.
Jimmy thought back over a succession of loaded tables ----at Christmases, Thanksgivings, birthdays, other family festivals.
"H'm," he said. "Why, I --- I don't know exactly."
"Do you remember, last year, when we went on that canoe trip and had to stay overnight in the woods? Rain? Wind? Cold? Hopelessly lost? And do you remember how, in the morning, we stumbled into a little clearing among the trees, where there was a cabin, and found an old man who gave us a piece of bread and some hot coffee? Honestly, now, did you ever eat a better meal than that?"
Jimmy felt no hesitation. "No," he said, "never. I can taste that bread yet. There was never anything half so good."
"That isn't altogether what I mean, James, but it's part of it. Bread of adventure. A man wants more out of life than three square meals a day and a comfortable bed to sleep in. He wants to live hard. Do you see what I mean? He wants to be hungry when he eats, and tired when he sleeps, and to look out for himself exactly the way nine-tenths of his fellow citizens do. There are other things in life than eating and sleeping. A man wants books. He wants to see the beautiful things and appreciate them. And he wants adventure."
"Adventure!" Jimmy's eyes sparkled. "When I hear that word, I always think of pirates."
"You don't have to meet pirates to find adventure. There's a lot of it waiting around the corner for anybody who wants to find it, and there always will be, anyhow for the next hundred years. Useful adventure. But right now in particular."
Mr. Elliott walked to the window, stretched his arms as if he were reaching out to something in the distance, and came back to the middle of the room.
"James," he said, pacing slowly up and down, "I'm going to war. I'm going, first of all, because it's my duty to go. I'm young and vigorous, and I can be useful to my country when she needs me. But I've another feeling, too, and I dare say nearly every man under the colors has this same feeling. I want my share of the bread of adventure.
"Pretty nearly all my life I've let other people do the dangerous things for me. I've never risked my neck mining coal, nor exposed myself to tropical diseases gathering rubber for automobile tires, nor taken the chance of being shot full of arrows searching for some medicinal plant in South America. Others have done those things for my comfort and safety. Now it's my turn. I ought to do it, James, and I want to do it." He stopped and faced the boy. "It's a part of life, this bread of adventure. It always has been, and I think it always will be. If I didn't get into this war, I'd feel, not only that I was cheating, but that I had been cheated."
"Precisely," said Mr. Perrin. He looked at his son, and Jimmy added a prim, "Yes, of course," because it was plain that something was expected of him.
Mr. Perrin drummed upon the desk with a pencil. He seemed, queerly, both disappointed and relieved. Finally he rose and shook hands with the tutor and congratulated him.
"For your sake, Mr. Elliott, I'm very glad you've decided to enlist. For my son's, I'm sorry you must go. There are many things he might learn from you if you stayed."
Jimmy turned this last sentence over in his mind as he and his father walked to the breakfast nook. He decided it must be simply a bit of politeness, for all three of them knew the lessons were practically completed. Still, it was a nice thing for dad to say.
Somehow or other, the keen edge of Jimmy's appetite had been dulled. Breakfast began with luscious blackberries, the first of the season. The morning before, Jimmy admitted to himself, such berries would have proved a rare treat. Now even the first mouthful lacked a thrill. 11e found himself wishing he might have been served with the usual grapefruit.
"Where's your appetite, Jamie?" asked his mother. "You used to be particularly fond of blackberries. Aren't yours good?"
"Yes," he said, "splendid, only ---yes, they're fine, mother."
They were, too; he conceded it honestly. But the pleasure of eating them seemed strangely missing.
The cereal he finished to the last crumb only because his mother's eyes were upon him. He did not want it in the least, despite its sweet, inviting crunchiness and the thick, yellow cream.
"What's the matter, James? Not sick, are you?" Even his father had noticed the stolid way in which he forced himself to eat.
"No, dad. I --- I guess I'm just saving up for the waffles."
The bacon came on curled and crisp, the toast was perfectly browned and drenched with butter, the eggs were precisely as Jimmy liked them; but after one mouthful he leaned back in his chair.
"Waiting for the waffles," he said apologetically.
But even the waffles, golden with maple syrup, tempted him no more than the other food. He ate two with an effort, refused the hothouse grapes, and was whole-heartedly glad when the meal ended.
"I'm going over to the store for a Chicago paper," he told his mother a little later. 11e was not particularly interested in the news from the nearest city having a morning paper, aside from the sports page, but he wanted to get away from --- well, from the atmosphere that oppressed him.
Thad Carrick was at the store, bending low over the book counter. Thad was twenty-five and had finished college three years before, but because he had been born and reared in the same neighborhood and on the same street, he had always seemed to Jimmy something like an older brother.
"Seen the big league scores in the paper this morning, Thad?"
"Not me. I'll say I haven't. I don't have time to waste on baseball these days." He shook his head as though announcing the most serious fact in the world. "I'm a student again. Look here." He held up the book he had just bought.
"Military Manual. Are you --- are you going, Thad?"
"James, my young friend, I am. When you look at me, you see Resolution wearing a Number 16 collar. Yes, sir, I am going on this excursion party to war-torn Europe. I just found it out this morning."
"But why?" demanded Jimmy for the second time that day. "Why should you go to war, Thad?"
Thad sobered. "I've argued it all out with myself. At first I decided that it wasn't my war unless Congress or somebody came along and took me. Then one night I began to wonder if I wasn't thinking that way because I was afraid. Nobody can help being afraid"---he stopped a moment --- "but a fellow doesn't have to let fear bully him."
"No-o, I suppose not."
"Besides," said Thad, "I suspect that all the time there was some sort of sneaking pull I couldn't resist. I don't know what you'd call it."
"Bread of adventure."
"What's that you said?"
"Nothing," Jimmy parried hastily. "I was just thinking out loud. But why don't you do your bit here in the States? Your father could get you a job in Washington."
"So he told me yesterday. In fact, I believe he thinks I'm packing my satchel right now for Pennsylvania Avenue. But no."
Jimmy had difficulty putting into words what he felt it necessary to say. "Thad, have you --- have you exactly figured out how dangerous it is --- going to war?"
"Over many sleepless hours, James, my young friend. But as I've endeavored to explain in words of one syllable, while my middle name isn't Davy Crockett, it's because of the danger I'm going."
Jimmy frowned. "Suppose something ---happens?"
"I hope it won't." Thad leaned on the book counter, his hand whitening under the pressure. "But if something does, at any rate I shall have had the satisfaction of knowing I wasn't bullied. I'm going into this war to prove to myself that, even if I am afraid, it can't stop me from doing what I want to do and what I ought to do."
He settled his hat on his head and regarded Jimmy quizzically. "Well, see you in Berlin! I'm trying for the Second Officers' Training Camp at Fort Sheridan. If I don't make it, I'll go over as a drummer boy, or a tent pole, or anything at all. But I'm going."
Jimmy walked home in a daze. First Mr. Elliott and now Thad Carrick had decided to go to war. He couldn't understand.
Instead of entering the house, he circled around to the garage and slipped into the deep-cushioned seat of his car. It was a straight-eight sports roadster, painted a battleship gray, and the motor instantly purred into life as he touched the starter.
He backed into the street, reversed to low, and went through the gear shifts to high with a silent adeptness that was due partly to the superb mechanism of the car and partly to his own skill. Once under way, he picked up speed till he was rolling along like some shadowy cloud racing before the sun. The pace exhilarated his flagging spirits; he felt more like his usual self.
Out beyond Nakoma, a mile or two from the city, he caught his first glimpse of the other car. It was a delivery truck, and it came hurtling down the road he was crossing, apparently intent on ramming him.
Jimmy experienced a fatal moment of indecision. His first impulse was to press hard on the accelerator and allow the roadster to leap clear. But even as his foot touched, he pivoted it on the heel and bore down hard on the brake. The car slowed, dragging the clamped wheels. But it was too late.
He found himself helpless. The truck swerved slightly, without diminishing speed. His roadster, skidding and slipping, surged forward relentlessly. It was as if somebody had drawn two converging lines and marked the intersection point for the inevitable collision.
Jimmy felt suddenly faint. His body stiffened and braced. In the tense split-second before the cars met he seemed to stop breathing, to stop living altogether.
It happened at last. With a hideous crash of clanking metal, breaking glass, and hissing air from a punctured tire, the roadster swung drunkenly about and stopped. The impact flung Jimmy's head against a windshield post, and when he lifted an instinctive hand to the hurt, it came away wet and sticky. This was the final horror; blood sickened him.
He sat for a long moment white and tense, stunned alike in mind and body. After a time he sucked a whimpering breath into his aching lungs and stirred uncertainly. His body did not want to move. It wanted to huddle down and go limp on the seat cushion.
Jimmy knew what the trouble was. He had been scared, scared to death, and he was still scared. As he forced himself from the car, stepping gingerly from the running board to the road like some tottering old man, he waited meekly for the blast of abuse from the other driver.
"What d'ya thing you're doing, huh?" The tall beanpole of a red-headed boy with the splotches of grease on his shirt had jumped from his truck and was advancing toward the lighter car. "I'm coming, and all you have to do is to use your eyes, and nothing happens. But do you do it? No, you pull up and block my path. Now look at us."
Jimmy, unhurt save for the superficial cut on his head, surveyed the tangle.
"But I was driving carefully," he objected, "and not taking chances---"
"Yes, and what happens? Answer me that. What happens? You start and you stop, and you start and you stop, and---bingo! What happens? You don't take a chance, and now you got to pay for it." From his pocket he pulled a greasy notebook. "Look at me." He spread his hands in front of him, and Jimmy observed the finger nails heavy with grime. "I take chances, and look at me. No accidents. Never. Say, what's your name?"
Jimmy was vaguely aware that something was wrong with the red-headed boy's reasoning, but he obediently gave his name and address.
"How do you spell Perrin? One R? Two. All right. My name is Al---Al Long. I'm working for the Gem Products Groceries. There's the street and number. Now I'm gonna get these cars untangled. You climb in yours and back out in a hurry. See?"
Jimmy felt the first thing to be done was to maneuver his bumper from the truck's fender, but Al appeared so sure of himself that he obeyed without question. With a grinding, wrenching clatter the fender bent and then ripped along its rusted fold.
"Hey! Stop! What d'ya think you're doing, huh?"
Jimmy checked the car.
"I said back out. I didn't say to break any speed records. Look what you've done to my truck now."
Jimmy examined the unlucky fender. "I ---I'll help you bend it back into place," he said.
Al straightened. The right corner of his mouth twisted, to give his face an expression of scornful amusement.
"You help me! Say, don't you think I can take care of my own truck?"
With quick, skilful moves he worked the fender back to a semblance of its former position, supporting it temporarily with some wire he produced from his tool box. Whatever Al's personal appearance, his truck bore the earmarks of careful grooming. For the first time Jimmy sensed a certain sympathy for the red-headed youngster.
"Well," Jimmy observed, "you have my license number and name, and we can adjust the damages later between ourselves. Good thing the accident didn't happen somewhere down town. We'd have had a policeman mixing in."
Al's head jerked up. "Listen," he said, "no cop can tell me anything. No, sir." He bent once more to his work. "Nobody puts anything over on Al. No, sir. I'll tell the world they don't." He straightened once more. "Do you think I'm fixing this up and taking good care of my truck because of my boss? I don't care what happens to his property. He's got money enough to buy another truck. I like cars. I keep this baby right because that's the way I like to have her." He wiped his face with the back of his hand, leaving a smear of black grease. "Anyhow, this job don't mean anything to me any more. I'm going to war."
Jimmy looked at him in amazement. Here was a boy, a mere kid, wanting to follow in the footsteps of Mr. Elliott and Thad Carrick, both old enough to weigh and consider and decide. Al couldn't possibly know what he was doing. He didn't realize that war was a serious menace.
"But why?" Jimmy asked for the third time that day. "Why do you want to go to war?"
"Because I want to see it, that's why," Al explained. "It's bound to be the biggest show that was ever pulled. You don't suppose I want to stay home and read writeups about it in the paper when I can get in myself without paying a cent, do you. Not if I know Al."
There it was again. Bread of adventure. Al, too, with a job that gave him three meals a day and a bed to sleep in, was reaching out for something more.
"What are you going to do?" Jimmy asked, "Try for a training camp?"
"Me --- a training camp!" The contempt in Al's voice was beyond expression. "Nobody puts Al in a training camp. What do I want to get trained for? To jump through hoops? This war is liable to end any minute now, and I'm going to be there before it does." He raised his right hand solemnly. "I'm an American citizen, I got my rights, and nobody puts anything over on Al. I'm going to get into this war right away. Al will be in France before the snow flies."
He climbed belligerently into the seat of his truck.
"What did you say your name was?" he asked.
Jimmy repeated the information.
"That's right. I wrote it down. Funny, I can't seem to remember other people's names. Well, over the ocean!"
Late that night, in his own room, Jimmy Perrin finished sorting the study outlines his tutor had prepared for him. In between two sheets, as if included through carelessness, he found a notation in Mr. Elliott's precise handwriting. It ran:
"Every normal person hungers for bread of adventure, which may be termed a symbolical name for adventure itself, for travel, for companionship (adaptability), for sacrifice (patriotism), for satiation of ambition, for hardening of decision, for responsibility (dreaded but desired), for test and development of character."
Jimmy crumpled the fragment to toss it into the wastebasket. But just as he was about to let it drop, he jerked back his hand and painstakingly smoothed the paper. He read the words a second time and began to think. Before he finally folded the accusing slip and tucked it into a wallet, the clock had ticked away a full thirty minutes.
He slipped off his shoes, unfastened his necktie, and lessened his shirt collar. But he didn't feel like going to bed. His movements dragged.
"I know what's the matter," he said to himself. "I'm hungry."
In his stockinged feet he stole quietly down to the kitchen and made himself a sandwich.
THE professor gathered his papers in a neat pile, and with a last look at his watch replaced it in his pocket. There seemed to be a twinkle in his fine old eyes as he concluded the hour's lecture.
"There is one point I ask you to bear in mind. Our study of history teaches us that, to a remarkable extent, nations and men may choose the paths they are to follow. In your own cases, for example, the fact that you are at the moment studying here at Columbia proves you prefer to be here. There are others who have wished to be --- elsewhere."
As Jimmy Perrin left the lecture room for the street, he found that last sentence echoing in his mind. Elsewhere? Of course that meant France. And yet why shouldn't a fellow be studying at the university, even if a war raged across the ocean; that is, if he wanted to? But --- and here was the real crux of the matter --- how could a fellow be absolutely sure of what he wanted to do? How?
"Hi, Perrin!"
Jimmy stopped and lifted his head. He could not locate the voice. Upper Broadway flowed with its usual traffic, but nobody seemed to be looking at him.
"Hi, Perrin! Over here!"
The call came from somebody in a taxicab halted at the opposite curb. With the disdain of a small-town boy, Jimmy crossed the street in the middle of the block, staring uncertainly at the khaki-clad figure that waved him closer.
"Why, Thad---Thad Carrick!" he said, as he recognized his old neighbor. "What on earth are you doing in New York?"
"Buggy riding," Thad told him, with a careless wave at the taxi. "If the big knowledge factory on Morningside Heights can spare you for an hour or two, hop in and join me. I'll show you something, James, my young friend, that will make your eyes pop."
"Columbia can spare me all right," Jimmy said bitterly. He took his seat beside Thad and looked back at Furnald Hall as the taxi sped down Broadway.
"So?" Thad eyed him keenly. "Then the sun doesn't rise rosy every morn at dawn for the poor little rich boy, and the posies die and wither, and what looked so beautiful at a distance is only a mirage. What's wrong, young feller?"
"I don't know exactly," Jimmy confessed. He could talk to Thad; Thad was like a big brother. "All my life I've looked forward to going away to school. Last month I enrolled at Columbia as a freshman, and --- and it isn't as I imagined it would be. Every student's mind seems thousands of miles away. There's no college spirit nor college life. They're even talking about abolishing athletics. And not a day passes but some student walks out of his classroom and never comes back at all. It -it's the war."
"Of course. The sorting process. War for the warriors; school for the students. The adjustment will come in time. Right now, James, my tortured young friend, I'm joy-riding you down to a certain pier beyond the West Twenty-third Street ferries on Mr. Hudson's well-known river, to wish me bon voyage on as queer a looking Robert E. Lee steamboat as ever you feasted placid blue eyes upon. The Aurania, she was christened in times agone, and they've splashed her --- But wait!"
"You're going across, Thad?" Jimmy stole an admiring glance at the trim khaki uniform. "You've enlisted?"
"Not yet, youngster. Just scheming. Officers' training camp, no go. Aviation, a long waiting list. Recruiting hut, no guarantee of sunny France for months and months. You see before you, James, my misled young friend, a wolf in sheep's clothing, which in the patois of the day means a civilian in an almost-soldier's outfit. This doggy uniform, with the red cockades on the collar, tells the initiated that I am a member of the American Field Service."
"What's that?"
"Who knows? Tempus fugit. I'll tell you what it was when I signed on the dotted line. Briefly, during the early days of the war, before we entered, there was organized in these United States of ours a service unit for supplying ambulance drivers for the French army. The call went forth for boys who knew how to drive. Groups from Yale and Harvard and Princeton and Dartmouth and other universities responded, till the first trickle of volunteers grew to a flood. They went across to France at their own expense and are now doing their bit up at the front for the munificent wage of about five cents a day."
"I never heard of the American Field Service before," said Jimmy, a little wistfully, and added, "I can drive a car."
"Too late, my young ostrich friend, to pull your head out of the sand. According to a recent cable, Uncle Sam has decided to gobble the free-lance ambulanciers in France and enlist them in his own tight little army. Rumor has the old gentleman as also ready to expand the service to include ammunition trains feeding the front. Not the choo-choo kind you're thinking of, James, but big five-ton trucks. Be that as it may, the Aurania, sailing on this bracing day of October 3, 1917, is the last boat on the old basis. No more calls for recruits; no more passports for hospital service in France. It's now or never for your Uncle Thad ---and I'm making it now."
The taxi turned west on Twenty-third Street, swung south along the river, and pulled up before a steamship office. On through the building Thad led, and out upon a great wharf, where he pointed with dramatic finger.
"Look at that for a ship, James, mon enfant. Tell me, if you can, what color it is, and what shape, and which way it's pointing. Camouflaged, they call it. Painted in waves and curves, with zigzag effects, in all the prismatic pretties of the rainbow. When lightning struck the spot marked X in the picture, I suspect the Aurania, poor wayward gal, must have been hugging a paint factory."
They climbed the gangplank, unmolested, to the main deck. It was crowded with boys, some in uniforms like Thad's, some in civilian garb, and some with the tiny metal letters, U. S., on the collars of their olive-drab coats.
"Why, they're just kids!" Jimmy told himself incredulously. "Half of them don't look as old as I am."
"How about a descent to my cabin?" invited Thad. "I want you to meet my bunkies."
They pounded down a broad stairway with shining brass rails to the next deck, faintly pungent with that unmistakable tang known only to ships that sail the seven seas; down another --- still another --- and still another, till it seemed to Jimmy there was no bottom. When they reached the stateroom at last, deep in the hold, it proved so small and stuffy that Jimmy hesitated on the threshold.
The room was empty. Thad snapped on an electric light and motioned Jimmy to enter. Inside he found the air better; a ventilator, even with the ship docked, fed it with clean, salty currents so good to breathe that Jimmy sucked in great lungfuls. At the far end, cupped in a stationary bureau, was a wash bowl; on either side rose double-tiered bunks.
"Wonder where White is?" Thad muttered.
"Who's White?"
"A little chap about your build. Not as keen to go as he might be Hello, here's a note pinned to my pillow." Thad tore off the end of the envelope and read the brief scrawl inside. When he was done, he crumpled the letter into a ball and threw it viciously at the floor. "Sniveling sissy! Quitter! Coward! Turned yellow at the last minute! Says he's reconsidered and changed his mind, and to give his trunk and uniform and duds to some deserving chap! Funked it, that's what he's done! Funked it!"
Thad sat down on the cabin's only chair and for a long minute stared at nothing at all.
"Sorry, James, old horse," he said presently. "Apologies and all that sort of thing for losing my temper. It just happens I feel pretty strongly about this matter of cowardice." He whipped open White's trunk and scooped out the contents. "Whom'll I give them to, pray? Want 'em as souvenirs, young feller? . . . Look here, the uniform would fit you as if you'd been poured into it and allowed to jell. Try it on."
"Have I time, Thad?" Jimmy wondered what kind of a soldier he'd make.
"Aeons and aeons. Not the zero hour yet, and anyhow who ever heard of a ship's getting away on the dot? Go to it, James, my curious young lad."
Jimmy flung off his street clothes and prepared to pour himself, as Thad had suggested, into the uniform. It would not work. The flannel shirt was familiar enough, but the other garments proved strange contraptions. The breeches laced just below the knees and were bridged to the shoe tops by puttees, which wound spirally up the legs. If you began in the wrong place, or did not anchor the first roll, or wound too tight or too loose or with the wrong upward curve ---all of which Jimmy did in the course of various experiments---the puttees fell short of their goal or overreached and went trespassing toward the hips. Then there was a coat, or tunic, which Thad called a blouse, and which had an open roll collar and bellows pockets, with an embroidered strip on the left sleeve bearing the words, "American Field Service." The cap, khaki-visored, was set off by a bronze insignia representing the American eagle holding a shield of stars and stripes. Altogether, it was a most fetching uniform.
"Now," said Thad, when Jimmy had mastered the last intricate detail, "stand up and let me look you over. Chin up, James, my young bucko; chest out; stomach in. That's it. Hold the pose. Fix your eyes on the little birdie while I press the bulb. There you are, ladies and gentlemen --- the photograph of Young America, our hope in the war. Thank you, sir. Proofs Thursday."
From high above them, far up as on a mountain top, droned the faint echo of a siren.
"What's that?"
Thad wet his lips. "It sounds," he admitted soberly, "like the fog horn. If it is, the ship is about ready to cast off."
A panic gripped Jimmy. "I must get ashore," he said, yanking furiously at the closed door. "Come on, Thad."
"Wait a minute. Take along your clothes."
"Never mind. I can buy others. I want to get off this boat."
"But ---
"Good-by, Thad."
"Coming!"
It was a race up those flights of stairs; up to D deck ---to C --- to B --- to A. Somewhere in the furious climb Jimmy took a decided lead, and with pounding heart and rasping lungs swept on alone into the open and flung himself across the promenade deck to the ship's rail.
There was no open gate, no gangplank.
An almost imperceptible tremor ran through the Aurania. The dock alongside receded sullenly, as if loath to allow the giant's departure. But gradually, inch by inch, as Jimmy stared with unbelieving eyes, the ship gathered way under the impetus of tugs out in the river, till she had backed majestically from her berth and pointed her questing bowsprit toward the open sea.
SOMETHING lifted Jimmy Perrin out of himself. The receding dock blurred into a cotton field of waving white handkerchiefs, with here and there a red and blue flower that marked a flag. A band set his foot tapping to the beat of its militant march. Planes overhead roared their approval. Blaring river craft whistled good-by, good-by and good luck. Godspeed to the Aurania, bound for the war. Godspeed to Jimmy Perrin.
He was an Ivanhoe, setting forth to right the wrongs of the world; a Richard of the Lion Heart; a Chevalier Bayard, without fear or reproach. Let those who liked stay home; he was going ---elsewhere.
Gradually the thrill dissolved into reality. He wasn't a hero; he wasn't there at all, except by proxy. For one brief, ecstatic span Fate had granted him the priceless boon of a warrior's heart in his student's body. At the touch of Thad's fingers on his arm, the illusion pricked and collapsed like a toy balloon.
"Don't think you've been shanghaied, James. I didn't suspect it was anywhere near sailing time. I --- I wouldn't have had this happen for a million dollars."
"Please!" said Jimmy a little vaguely. He wanted that blissful memory for a keepsake. "Please!"
"Let's figure a bit. Suppose you are forced to make the trip across?"
"But I don't want to get into the war. Anyhow, I don't think I do."
"Not necessary to step foot in Europe. You cross to Liverpool, where we are to land, and turn around and sail right back again."
"But I haven't any ticket."
"Use White's. It's in his trunk."
"Not a round-trip one."
"No-o. Well, I can loan you enough money for the return trip."
"I haven't any passport."
"If you don't land in England, you won't need a passport."
"But my folks --- I can't just disappear."
"When the Aurania drops her pilot, out a way, you can send a wire to your father, explaining what's happened."
"But ---"
"For the love of Mike, James, my finicky young friend, quit inventing objections. If you only knew it, you're in luck. Just crossing the ocean nowadays is a big adventure, and the stir of it should be driving your heart like a trip hammer. Why, the rest of us must give value received, somewhere on the fighting front of France. You don't; you can dance without paying the fiddler. Old Lady Opportunity has crooked her finger at you, and here you are, hemming and hawing and backing off. What's in your veins, youngster --- water?"
"I don't know, Thad. I've been trying to find out ever since I saw you last summer and you told me you were going."
Thad wisely forbore comment. It wasn't his right to encourage or discourage; each must find the answer for himself. You could lead a fellow to war, but you couldn't make him fight.
So the two of them wrote out a long telegram to Jimmy's father, and Thad gave it to the steward, with instructions to see that it was taken off by the pilot and put on the wires the minute he reached shore. There was another alternative Thad had not suggested and Jimmy did not know: Jimmy himself might have gone back to New York on the pilot tug.
"I'm just giving the kid his chance," Thad argued in justification to himself. "I know what's the matter with him; I've fought it out through a thousand sleepless hours. He's afraid of being afraid. If he still feels that way after he's rubbed elbows with the fellows aboard, the best thing he can do is go back to school."
The minor difficulties attending the substitution of Jimmy for the cowardly White smoothed themselves out with ridiculous ease. The other fellows in the cabin, never having met White, accepted Jimmy as a logical fourth. He usurped White's bunk and ticket and trunk and uniform; he stepped, literally, into White's shoes.
The Aurania's first port of call was Halifax, where she lay at anchor for twenty-four hours. There was no shore leave, and nothing happened except a lifeboat drill. That was quite enough. On the port side, as the boat was being lowered, one of the davits gave way and dumped the crew headlong into the water.
Jimmy gripped the rail till the blood was forced from his knuckles. There was no real danger, of course, here in a closed harbor with still water, and the sailors made a joke of swimming about till they were hauled aboard. But suppose---just suppose---that the same thing happened out in mid-ocean with a heavy sea running?
Next day the Aurania, now one of a convoy of ten ships, left Canada behind and churned out to sea. Thad prophesied a long voyage.
"In a convoy like this," he explained to Jimmy, "the speed must be regulated to that of the slowest ship, and by the looks of those two queer Noah's Arks yonder, which the steward tells me are tankers carrying gasoline, that's saying it with brakes. Besides, we aren't plunging straight ahead, as you see; we're zigzagging and interchanging positions, which means that for every knot forward we're doing at least half that distance sideways, like a bevy of crabs."
"What's the sense of it all?" Jimmy asked innocently.
Thad studied his face. "Precaution. The same reason the ships are painted with the weird camouflage effect, the same reason we'll travel to-night and every night without lights ---to make of the convoy as elusive targets as possible."
"You mean --- Jimmy wet his lips --- "submarines?"
"Right the first clap out of the box, James, my boy."
"But there aren't any submarines over here. There can't be."
"Of course not. Nothing to worry your Columbia thinker about. Let the gold-braided chaps up on the bridge do whatever worrying they consider good etiquette; that's their job."
It was all very well to ridicule the idea of German submarines so close to the American shore; but the thing was possible. Hadn't the Deutschland crept underseas across the Atlantic and bobbed up in Chesapeake Bay on July 9th, 1916? And how about that other boat, the U-53 or something, that had been moored behind the protection of high wooden barriers at Newport, Rhode Island? If a submarine torpedoed the Aurania and the lifeboats didn't work --
All that long day, hour after hour, as they left land farther and farther behind, Jimmy watched the surface for possible threats. He knew what to look for. A periscope at a distance would resemble a stick, a mass of vegetation, a rippling fish snout. The steward had told him.
The steward, as a matter of fact, kept alive the fires of Jimmy's dread. He had been wounded earlier in the war, and he had seen much on land and sea that was not nice to remember . . . Horses from a sunken transport swimming helplessly in mid-ocean . . . Ships torpedoed . . . Close fighting in France . . . Things like that. He came into the cabin that first night out from Halifax and talked.
It was a horrible night. Jimmy tossed restlessly, with the conviction that his body lay shackled in the vaultlike bunk. He would lapse into sleep, harassed by spectral dreams, and come awake clawing and gasping. Toward morning the wind freshened, and though the Aurania did her best to preserve the even tenor of her way, now and then she drove at the battering sea with resounding thuds, or rolled in the trough of the waves and pitched and lurched.
Daylight brought relief. The sea still ran high and occasionally wet the promenade deck with gusts of spray that made it glisten like a mirror, but by clinging to the rail Jimmy found he could cover its full length. Best of all, coming up on deck robbed him of that feeling of being confined in a tiny cell whose four walls might at any minute close and crush him.
One worry gnawed at his mind. It was good weather for submarines; they could come close without revealing the telltale periscopes.
The day wore to a close. Another dawned, following a night made miserable by the steward's early evening reminiscences. This was a calm, cloudy day, with fog and low visibility. The ten ships swirled and circled like water bugs in a stagnant pool.
"Bang!" said the little gun on the Aurania's afterdeck; and "Bang!" it said again.
The smoking room and the dining room and the lounge and the cabins emptied. On the main deck sailors took their positions at the lifeboats.
"Where is it?" Jimmy demanded shrilly. "Do you see the submarine, Thad?"
"Pipe down, youngster. Nothing's in sight. This is just drill."
Maybe it was. Maybe it was only preparation for the inevitable emergency. And, again, maybe the officers up there on the bridge had thought they saw something swishing the surface. You couldn't be sure.
The whole ship buzzed with conversation. There was one single topic: submarines. Jimmy wandered from group to group, and heard over and over again how this fellow or that fellow or the other fellow's friend had once seen what looked like a stray bean pole growing from the ocean, had discerned a boiling swath of water in the wake of a torpedo, had heard something crunch against his ship and . . . That evening the steward capped the tales with one of his own.
The next day was little better. Jimmy's nerves felt raw and tingling, and a dropped plate or a slammed door threatened him with panic. Some of the fellows came to meals with life preservers strapped about their bodies. Funny, yes, he agreed with Thad; but there was no mirth in his set smile.
He lost all track of time. Days piled upon days and night upon nights in an endless parade. When Thad told him they were six days out of Halifax, he couldn't believe it --- it must be weeks, months.
"Halfway across, gentlemen," the steward said that morning. "But of course we'll be in the danger zone from now on."
The reminder did not help any. Jimmy grew fidgety and irritable. Thad did his best to ease the strain, consoling, flippant, derisive of danger; but even Thad could not stay the sweep of morbid thoughts.
"Won't we ever get there?" Jimmy demanded petulantly.
"Soon enough." Thad forced a grin. He was none too sure of himself. "What's the rush?"
"So I can come back again. If I ever get my feet on dry land again, I'll keep them there."
"Well," Thad said ambiguously, "it's a good thing for a fellow to stand squarely on his own two feet."
With England three days distant, the steward came to their cabin.
"The captain's compliments, gentlemen, and he asks that you and everybody else sleep to-night on deck, wearing life preservers." From the corridor he turned back to add, "They're uncovering the gun on the afterdeck and swinging out the lifeboats on the davits. You never can tell."
Just at dawn, a few minutes after Jimmy had fallen into his first troubled doze on that hard deck, he woke to the sound of an explosion. The Aurania's gun boomed and crashed. Off to starboard, where it seemed to have wandered by itself, one of the tankers quivered with a mortal hurt and began gradually to settle lower and lower. Well ahead of the convoy of ships, which went scuttling with the mad frenzy of ants when a heel destroys their home, a tiny black tube swished through the water and disappeared with a final fillip.
"They got one of us --- a tanker." It was Thad speaking. His voice burred with deep emotion. But he stood very straight. He looked exactly as he did that time back home before he thrashed a fellow who had spoken to his sister.
"Torpedoed?" Jimmy asked. "You mean a German submarine sank her?"
Thad nodded impatiently. "Of course."
Jimmy sat down suddenly, as if some giant hand had pressed on his head and telescoped his body. Sky and sea and ships whirled in a riot of color that was more than camouflage. His eyes ached, and his cheeks were hot, and his heart pounded, and he could not seem to swallow. He had tasted war and found it incredibly bitter.
LIFEBOATS were lowered, this time without accident, and the crew of the stricken tanker transferred to the safety of a sound hull. The other ships, including the Aurania, steamed about in a devious circle that grew wider and wider, as if that thing of iron and steel in the center, licked by hungry ripples, were some terrible plague . . Then the convoy went on, nine ships now.
Jimmy rubbed his eyes with curious unbelief. He had seen the catastrophe, yet it would not register on his mind. The setting was not right. To the east the sun shone from a cloudless blue sky; the sea was tranquil save for a gentle, undulating swell; all about breathed the peace and serenity of boundless green water.
"What's that!" he asked abruptly, pointing toward the horizon, where tiny black specks, like darting insects, caught his glance. "More ---- more submarines?"
"Quite the contrary, sir," purred the obsequious voice of the steward in his ear. "It's the mosquito fleet of subchasers, sir, sent out to meet us and escort us into port. No more danger now, if I may say so." It seemed to Jimmy he said it reluctantly.
The sub-chasers were tiny boats, very fast and very businesslike. They met the convoy, pouncing upon it as if they wore seven-league boots, and promptly spread about the lumbering ships a protecting chain of defense. Jimmy heaved a sigh of relief. Theirs the job of sighting and investigating each stick and mass of vegetation and rippling fish snout. For the first time he was free to lower the imaginary binoculars with which he had been scanning the ocean through every hour of daylight.
Thanks to the presence of those grim, efficient guards, Jimmy relaxed. That night and the next he slept soundly, and on the third day, when they sighted England, his mind opened like a flower to the sunlight of changing panorama. A new world, that he had known only from pictures and printed words, unfolded before his eyes. The faint blur the steward said was land. The low-lying chalk hills. The ragged coast line. The water traffic: trawlers, mine-sweepers, tugs, fishermen, skiffs, and dories with sails, and, finally, the tiniest boats of all, with rowers who waved a welcome or simply sat with shipped oars and stared. On a promontory of land a great amusement park like Coney Island, but rusted, uncared for, deserted. The inner harbor. Liverpool itself, spreading from the wharves in ugly disarray.
"I wish," Jimmy said, "I could go ashore and prowl. It looks interesting."
Thad did not answer, and Jimmy, for no reason at all, squirmed and fell silent himself. He was glad when the steward approached.
"Everybody is requested to report in the dining salon, gentlemen, for examination of passports. I trust the few experiences I recalled for you may have helped to relieve the monotony of the voyage. Thank you, sirs."
As the engines of the Aurania, fourteen days out of New York, whined into a silence that seemed appalling by contrast, Thad and Jimmy turned toward the crowded room. By the time they were inside, the ship had lost seaway and been boarded by a group of uniformed officials.
"And now," said Jimmy, trying to speak lightly, "you'll see what happens when a fellow comes across the ocean in war times without a passport."
"They can't hang you for that," Thad observed drily.
It was easy for Thad to mock. He could have faced the officials with a clear conscience and a ready tongue. Jimmy could not. He was scared to death already, and feeling guilty of some heinous crime, and looking about wildly for some loophole of escape. A fine showing he'd make!
The waiting line uncoiled slowly toward the interviewer at the first table. Jimmy found himself pressed inexorably closer. He was fifteenth man now. Twelfth. Seventh. Third, and near enough to overhear the procedure. The ordeal began with asking your name and checking it on the passenger list. Next you offered your passport and proved your identity.
And Jimmy was not on the passenger list and had no passport!
"Name?" snapped a voice.
He was facing the test now, but he was doing it very badly indeed. His wavering eyes would not meet the inquisitor's, and he found himself shuffling his feet.
"Perrin," he said hoarsely. "James Perrin."
The man ran a pencil down his alphabetical list till it encroached on the Q's. He said, "Hm-m-m," irritably and forayed afresh.
"Not here," he growled accusingly.
"Yes, sir --- I mean, no, sir. I --- well, sir, I'm not listed as a passenger."
"Stowaway? Not likely. Not healthy. We're here to weed out spies."
Jimmy's knees buckled. He placed a steadying hand on the table and fought for words to explain. What might have happened he was never to know, for at that moment another man leaned over the shoulder of the first and whispered.
"All right," barked the inquisitor at the table, quite as if somebody had snatched away a choice morsel just as he was about to devour it. "All right. Take him over to Colonel Sutton then. Next!"
The name stirred vague memories in Jimmy's mind. His father had campaigned with a Sergeant Sutton in the Spanish-American war; together they had charged up San Juan Hill with Colonel Roosevelt's Rough Riders. If it chanced to be that Sutton ---
It was. Over in one corner a slim, clean-limbed man wearing the insignia of eagles on his uniform shook hands with Jimmy in a most democratic manner. There was something young and eager about him, despite his graying hair and eyebrows, that won Jimmy completely.
"A chip of the old block, that's what you are!" he declared, holding the boy at arm's length. "The sight of you takes me back twenty years. You look like your father, Perrin, when I first met him."
"In Cuba, wasn't it, sir? Dad's told me about you."
"A fine, upstanding soldier, your father; one of the best." Colonel Sutton placed a hand on Jimmy's shoulder. "And now, just when I was beginning to fear the mould that turned him out might be broken, you come along, ready to carry on the family traditions of duty and loyalty and courage."
A voice, that was not Jimmy's voice at all, crept out of his mouth and murmured, "Yes, sir."
Colonel Sutton's lean face crinkled into a smile. "I envy you, Perrin. They say to me, 'Certainly, Colonel, we'll send you to the front in charge of your regiment. But not right away. Later. We need trained army men at the base ports. Run over to Liverpool as debarkation officer till we can relieve you. Later ---'And that's why I say I envy you, Perrin. My 'later' is your 'now.'"
Again the voice that was not Jimmy's said, "Yes, sir, I understand."
Colonel Sutton reached for a sheaf of papers. "Your father cabled me to take care of you, Perrin. I've kept the wires busy unwinding a bale of red tape, but I've managed. Everything's settled --- passport, visa, government permission, American Field Service recognition --- everything. There isn't a reason in the wide world why you can't go along with the other fellows to France."
The Jimmy who sat in the chair facing the colonel turned into a stranger. The other Jimmy ---the one who had come into the room --- would have blurted out that he was not going to France and that all he asked was to be sent back home. But this new Jimmy simply nodded and grinned, quite as if he had achieved the ambition of his life.
"After the Spanish-American war," Colonel Sutton went on reminiscently, "your father accepted his discharge from the army. I couldn't; the service gripped me arm and foot. Sometimes I've wondered, Perrin, to what heights your father might not have climbed in uniform, for he was always a better soldier than I shall ever be. But life compensates. It's given him you, my boy, to uphold the family honor of the fighting Perrins, to act as his proxy. He'd want to be in this war, and he is, just as surely as if he stood before me now." The colonel's eyes met and held Jimmy's. "I think your father must be very, very proud of his son."
Jimmy's shoulders straightened. He found suddenly that he had no desire to protest or explain; only that he wanted, more than anything else in the world, to be the man his father and Colonel Sutton had the right to expect.
"Thank you, sir," he said gravely, "for all you've done to help me."
The colonel came to his feet, lithe as a boy, His smile was a benediction. "And thank you, Perrin, for bolstering my faith in mankind."
That was all. Not a single word about the possibility of a return trip on the Aurania.(1) Yet Colonel Sutton had known; somewhere about his desk at the moment, in all probability, lay a steamship ticket to the United States, duly stamped and signed, with Jimmy's name as passenger.
On the train to London that night, Thad broke a long silence.
"James, my not-so-young friend any more," he observed, "you may be assailed now and then with leering doubts, but you've got it in you."
"Got what?"
"Courage. The kind of thing the high-brows call moral fiber. It cropped out when you bluffed Colonel Sutton."
Jimmy was bewildered. He felt pretty sure the bluffing had been all on the colonel's part.
"When he called you a chip of the old block, and lauded your dad as a real he-soldier, didn't you sort of tingle with pride?"
"Well---yes."
"And when he clapped you on the shoulder and talked about the mould that shaped real warriors, didn't you feel you must live up to the character?"
"Yes," agreed Jimmy; and added bitterly, "I was coward enough to let him believe it if he liked."
"Coward --- nothing! It was pride; pride in the family name that made you smile and take your medicine, pride in your dad's clean record. You wouldn't pose as the horrible example of a blot on the 'scutcheon. Well, that won the day, stemmed the tide of defeat, nailed new valor to the flagstaff. And don't forget, James, my growing lad, that it took courage."
A long pause. The train rushed through the dark night while Jimmy thought it over. Maybe --- maybe ---
"There's another point," Thad said presently. "You made your decision to go on, anyhow, a little farther, as a duty to your father." He turned away from Jimmy and rubbed at the window in an embarrassed manner. When he spoke again, his voice was low. "Sometimes I think a fellow's country is a good deal like his father."
"Oh!" said Jimmy. "Oh!" Just like that. "Well, if nothing happens, perhaps I may---" But he could not put it into words.
EARLY the next morning, when the special train swung into the London terminal, Thad and Jimmy were two very tired boys. The trip had been made second class.
"And that's a highly complimentary rating," yawned Thad, as they set foot in London for the first time. "Propped up all night in a jammed compartment, with no scenery to admire except the molars of the snoring fellow whose knees are braced against yours from the opposite bench, is about ninety-ninth class."
"Where do we go from here?" asked Jimmy.
Thad unrolled his steamship ticket. It was a very comprehensive ticket, reading by sections from New York to Paris.
"More second-class stuff," he snorted. "Down to Southampton by train, across the English Channel by boat to Le Havre, then up to Paris by train again." He stole a calculating glance at Jimmy. "But that's all for to-morrow. Here we are in London, free for to see if its well-known bridge is really falling down. Let's give it a look."
"Let's wash up and eat," countered Jimmy.
"No sooner said than done, James, my practical young friend. Here comes a double-decker bus. It will waft us somewhere."
Thad gave the conductor, who was a woman, a quarter to pay the fares; and after she had examined the coin a little vaguely, her face suddenly lightened, and she said, "Ah, Americans!" and made change in English coppers.
"Why, all the conductors are women!" Jimmy exclaimed, studying the street traffic from his seat atop the bus. "And they're driving public taxis and running street cars and ---"
"Kebs, James, and trams. Yes, the women are carrying on at home for old England while their men are fighting."
"Oh!" said Jimmy. "Oh!" The same way he had said it the night before.
The bus flung around a corner, rambled two or three blocks in another direction, and halted at the intersection of a busy street.
"Piccadilly," Thad interpreted from a sign. "The Broadway of London. Let's hop off and find Piccadilly Circus and feed peanuts to the animals."
Jimmy grinned. Thad needn't think he could put anything over on him: Piccadilly Circus wasn't any Barnum and Bailey show.
They raced down the steps from the upper deck of the bus, now in motion, brushed past the lady conductor, and jumped to the street. She scowled at first; then, remembering they were Americans and in uniform, smiled and waved. England, weary of war, needed just such impulsive youngsters to put their shoulders to the wheel.
On a cross street, hard by Piccadilly, they encountered a substantial building that brought them up short.
"Jermyn Court Hotel," read Thad. "Well, if you pronounce it carefully, English fashion, it doesn't sound much like the word 'German.' In we go."
Bath and breakfast rubbed away the last blots of fatigue and they set forth to see London, wandering without plan or destination. Piccadilly Circus revealed itself as no more than an oval plaza. Hyde Park, with its soap-box exhorters, held them for a time. The Bank of England looked as solid as Gibraltar, and the Tower of London as grim. St. James Palace, with the Horse Guards in plumed hats and red coats and wide white belt straps, was agreed a knock-out. They set their watches from Big Ben and discovered that London Bridge was not falling down. And about noon, after they had approached a cockney youth for advice as to an eating place and discovered to his and their own amazement that they could not make head or tail of what he was saying, they found a quaint tavern by themselves, experimented with a kidney pie, and found it good.
It was a great day; a day of blue skies and warm sun, a day of fresh impressions and sights at every turn, a day of sheer joy to two boys from "across" who were exploring a new world.
In the early evening they came out of another tavern---the kind of a tavern where the waiter wheels the roasts and vegetables to your table on a tea cart and slices and ladles at your direction --- to find the streets of the city as black and impenetrable as Stygian caves. The darkness nipped at their high spirits. At first it was good fun, and they laughed over the mishaps of bumping into other people and making progress with a guiding trolley hand on the abutting masonry; but after hours of blind groping, to the toll of barked shins and elbows and aching muscles, the thing ceased to be a joke, and they fought back, by relays of instruction, to the haven of their hotel.
"I like England," Jimmy told Thad, stretching out in his bed with a sigh of luxurious relief. "To-morrow I'm going on with the Field Service fellows to Southampton, and maybe across the Channel. I --- I might even like France." And with that last word on his lips, smiling a little, he dropped off into untroubled sleep.
He woke to the clanging of bells. The dark room, the hall outside, the whole hotel reverberated to the din of what seemed a monster alarm clock. Confused and only partially awake, Jimmy sprang from his bed.
"What is it?" The old tremor stuttered his speech.
Somewhere outside a siren shrieked.
"Don't know," Thad answered. "Better dress. Might be a fire."
He snapped on the light, and the two boys climbed into their clothes. Thad was ready first, for Jimmy's fingers proved all thumbs. The uniform baffled him. The pants would not go on over the shoes. The belt lip stuck in its loop. He buttoned his blouse askew. A conscientious sergeant would have sent him to quarters for the way he rolled his puttees.
Outside the room, on the street side, perched a tiny balcony. Thad stood before the two full-length windows that faced it.
"Everybody down in the street is running," he reported. "No, they aren't even looking at our hotel. Can't be a fire, then. Let's get a better look. I'll open these windows and---"
The windows opened themselves. The glass shattered into fragments and the denuded frames puffed inward. A detonation shook the hotel.
Jimmy gasped in terror. He clapped a quick hand over his mouth to stay a cry of alarm. It was no good pretending; he was scared, thoroughly scared.
Thad, himself whiter than usual, took control of the situation. "Whatever's happening," he told Jimmy, "this hotel is no place for us. Come on."
The elevator, which they had learned to call a lift, was in operation, loading at every floor and carrying guests to the street level. Thad and Jimmy would have none of it. They galloped down the broad stairways, three steps at a time, and finished the race with a sprint into the open night.
The street was a flood of running people. Somewhere close at hand another siren wailed. A pack of giant firecrackers let loose. Off to the north a maroon light flared in the sky and was swallowed by the darkness. Another detonation, as if a skyscraper had toppled, shook the ground under their feet. It seemed to Jimmy the world had gone mad.
Thad singled out a solitary policeman, plodding his beat with slow, unhurried steps.
"What is it?" he demanded. "Explosion? Earthquake? Armageddon?"
The man regarded him with puzzled eyes, which cleared as he comprehended the uniform.
"Americans, what? A new experience for you Yanks. It's a German air raid, sir. Zeppelins. A whole pack of them this time. Best take cover before the shrapnel begins falling from our guns. Go to the station of the tube, the underground yonder."
The two boys joined the fringe of the fleeing mob. Jimmy would have broken into a panic-stricken run except for Thad's restraining hand.
"Steady does it," counseled Thad. "Keep your head. Don't let the English see an American afraid. Watch them."
The ragtag of the population was out of control, but the native Londoners proceeded in a most leisurely fashion. The bobby they had addressed stalked along at his usual deliberate pace. A night postman went about his business undisturbed. The busses had not stopped. Double-deckers lumbered by like frightened elephants, empty of all but drivers and plucky women conductors.
Jimmy compromised on a rapid toe-and-heel walk. He admired the Londoners' calm, but they'd been through it before and he hadn't. As for losing his head--- well, you could take that two ways, and one was ghastly literal. He hurried his steps.
By now he could hear an intermittent bombardment of anti-aircraft batteries, echoing from the outskirts and along the Thames to the business district. Rapiers of white fire gashed the black velvet of the night above, thrusting, crossing and recrossing, probing, searching. Once a point of some random searchlight scored its touch; instantly others converged upon the dark hulk floating in the sky and etched it in clear silhouette for the gunners below. The battery roared like a cyclone.
"T-a-k-e c-o-v-e-r! Take cover!" The cry, which Jimmy had heard as a mumble at first, rang through the streets with the urge of a clarion. "Take cover! T-a-k-e c-o-v-e-r!"
He felt himself sucked into the vortex of the human flood. His own terror was engulfed by myriad terrors on every side. He lost Thad at the subway entrance as the crowd moiled and fought to safety.
The underground station was worse, if that were possible, than the menacing outdoors. It was crammed to suffocation. He could not move. The rank air bit at his nostrils. And it was not safe; he knew that if one of those falling bombs made a fair hit, it must come crushing through a roof that could offer no more hindrance than so much paper.
Time dragged. Minutes piled on minutes. His head ached, and a foot, which he could not move, went numb. Only his brain kept active, fed by memories.
In less than an hour the "All clear!" signal emptied the rat hole. To Jimmy, alone with his morbid thoughts in the midst of that solid mass of humanity, it seemed an eternity before the release. He had read of soldiers dug in over in France while shells sang overhead and hit and ricocheted with exultant screams. Now he knew how those soldiers suffered.
Late into the night, back in their hotel room at the Jermyn Court, Thad talked to him. These raids were only for effect; they were organized to shake England's morale; the damage they did was out of all proportion to the noise and bombast. They weren't really as dangerous, Thad put it neatly, as they sounded.
That was all very well, but the next day Jimmy bought a newspaper.(2) He read the headline, "80 CASUALTIES IN ZEPPELIN RAID", and the lead over the first story, "27 PEOPLE KILLED AND 53 INJURED," before the paper dropped from his limp fingers.
Not dangerous!
So they called this kind of thing war. Jimmy had always supposed war was a succession of open battles --taking a ridge, or charging a hill, or troops meeting on some open field. His wildest imagination had not pictured a sleek, dripping boat that stuck its snout up from the ocean and spat death and destruction, or loathsome, invisible birdcraft that winged over a defenseless city and dropped tons of explosives from their talons. If these were only the forerunners of war, what must the real thing be like over in France?
JIMMY PERRIN did not run up the white flag of surrender and scuttle for home. The next afternoon, instead, found him boarding a train for Southampton. There was no heroism about his starting on another lap with the Field Service boys; it was just easier to go on than to turn back.
He could not face Colonel Sutton again. He could not sit in the history class of Columbia, with the fine eyes of the professor clouding at sight of him. He could not find words of explanation for his father. And that return voyage across the Atlantic!
It was easier to go down to the sea in a train that dawdled through a fairy countryside of hedges and parks and homes; and even if Southampton sat upon the bank of nothing more pretentious than the English Channel, all the better. A short trip of hours, instead of torturing days and nights, would bridge the gap from land to land.
Probably there were berths on the Channel boat, but the Aurania ticket did not mention them. Thad and Jimmy, in common with scores of other restless souls. walked the deck or snoozed in convenient chairs as the night wore on without incident to its climax of dawn and France.
Le Havre, port of entry, its quays bright with women in native costume, reminded Jimmy of the foreign setting for some play. If they had rung down the curtain after a decent interval, he would always have remembered the city as beautiful. But fourteen hours of waiting and wandering and waiting, of seeing the same things over and over and over, of plodding from railroad station to shore and from shore to railroad station, convinced him that somebody, playwright or scenic artist, had blundered. Le Havre was nothing more than a tiresome, prosaic seaport, without the slightest dramatic appeal.
Late that evening the special train, exclusively second class, decided to get up steam and depart. It meandered through the darkness to Paris, and near midnight fumbled to a stop in a gloomy cavern of a building, where the passengers were transferred to waiting trucks and driven over invisible cobblestone streets to some sort of a courtyard.
"American Field Service Headquarters," Thad announced. "Number 21 rue Raynouard."
Jimmy did not think much of the headquarters. As nearly as he could make out in the darkness, the place consisted of a big back yard, dotted with sheds, in which scores of cots had been jammed so tightly that they almost touched. He lay down on one of them, pulling a prickly woolen blanket over his cold body, and wished for the millionth time he had never left the United States.
Morning worked a miracle. Jimmy's first view of the outer world brought him up short, chin lifted and eyes vide with wonder. What he had catalogued last night as a back yard was in reality a park of many acres, sloping gently, from a château, on the street level, toward the Seine River. A Swiss chalet, wearing a red Tam-o'-shanter roof, perched saucily on an eminence. The sky was the bluest blue he had ever seen, and the foliage, lawn, shrubs, and trees, the greenest green.
Across the river, almost directly opposite, with the sunlight etching its spider-web structure a burnished silver, Eiffel Tower pierced the heavens. And on beyond, and to east and west, Paris rose from an emerald forest, with arching, white bridges and gray, moss-covered houses with gay-tiled roofs that shamed the rainbow.
"First call for breakfast, James, my young beauty worshipper." It was Thad's voice, of course. "Or have you spoiled your material appetite by greedily cramming scenery?"
"No---o. Just the same, it's wonderful."
"A faint word for the fair prospect, James. Now I understand why everybody advises one to see Paris."
"See Paris," quoted Jimmy soberly, "and die."
All through breakfast that fool quotation stuck in his throat, "See Paris and die." Afterward, while Thad and he explored the city as aimlessly as they had London, trudging out the spokes of boulevards from the hub of the Opera, climbing the hill to Montmartre and Notre Dame, venturing across the river to the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank, the words kept running through his mind, "See Paris and die." Sometimes he varied them, though he felt the meaning unchanged, "See Paris and enlist."
In the days that followed, his spirits sagged and soared. Sometimes he was sure of himself; sometimes he admitted he was thoroughly licked. It was like riding a teeter-totter, up one moment and down the next. About the only way to climb off, he told himself bitterly, was to reach a final decision and have done with see-sawing once and for all.
The nights were worst. He could not get to sleep. He would turn in, physically tired, and then lie awake for hours, thinking, thinking, till the skein of his thoughts tangled into a horrible snarl.
The first night he thought about Fred Barry.
Fred had come to him in the château library that day and said good-by. "I'm leaving," he told Jimmy. "All set."
"Enlisted already, have you?"
"Enlisted ---nothing! I went out and got myself a job. Going to drive for the Red Cross. Here in Paris." He closed one eye. "War work that exempts me from the army. Why should a fellow sign up for thirty-three dollars a month, to slave and eat dust and mud and maybe blood up there at the front, when he can have soft pickin's and soft livin' and no danger right here in Paris? Tell me that."
Jimmy could not tell him. He could not even tell himself after a span of sleepless hours that night. All he knew was that a fellow who ---well, who had come all the way to France without making up his mind whether he wanted to get into the war or not, still had an avenue of escape. There were driver jobs, Fred confided, to be had for the asking; lots of them, and at good pay. The idea intrigued Jimmy. He almost made up his fluctuating mind to follow Fred's example. Still, he disliked Fred; Fred was not the kind to imitate. And there it was again, his mind spinning giddily like a kid's top.
The second night he thought about Thad Carrick.
For Thad, too, had gone. Not dishonorably, like Fred Barry, but on recommendation of some officer of the Field Service headquarters. Thad had been accepted as a student in the Lafayette Escadrille, a French aviation school.
Aviation! Why, going into aviation was like committing suicide. He'd never see good old Thad again. An average life hope of only a few short weeks, according to the stranger who had cornered Jimmy in the chateau and checked off the services. Aviation, weeks, he had said; infantry, months; ambulance, a half-year; and so on down the list. This new unit of ammunition trains, trucking to the trenches, which the American Field Service was inaugurating, was the only one comparable to aviation in danger.
Poppycock rumors, probably; they grew like weeds. But true or not, Thad had gone.
His departure plucked Jimmy's sun from the midday sky and marooned him in darkness. He had never felt more miserably alone in his life. He did not know what to do, nor which way to turn. Never again could he fall back on Thad for comfort and counsel. All his embryo plans to enlist embraced Thad as a brother-at-arms; without him they sagged once more into the slough of doubt and dread.
The third night he thought about the little French boy.
That afternoon he had seen a youngster chasing a ball into the street, oblivious of an automobile that came charging around the corner. There was no time to think. Before Jimmy even knew what he was doing, he had swooped up the boy, flung him to safety, and felt the tire of the front wheel graze his leg.
It was all over in ten seconds. No applauding throng showered him with plaudits nor gave him a chance to say, as fellows always did in stories after a rescue, "Don't thank me. I only did my duty." The car went on without stopping. Nobody seemed to have witnessed the incident. The little French boy, safe on the curb, made a wry face at Jimmy and babbled some incoherent argot that sounded like "Foutaise!"
But Jimmy exulted. It had been a test. Instead of freezing into horror-stricken inactivity, he had retained presence of mind enough to do the right thing. Something, some impulse he couldn't name, had grabbed him by the neckband and thrust him forward. Was it courage? Was it possible, after all, that he wasn't a coward? Perhaps if a fellow faced danger --- had to face danger --- he'd find within him a reservoir of courage, on which he might draw in an emergency.
The fourth night he wondered what was to become of him.
That forenoon, under the spur of restored confidence, he had marched straight to the Swiss chalet for his physical examination. There were other boys ahead of him, a small crowd, but he waited his turn without flinching.
After it was all over, the doctor made a notation on one of the scattered record sheets, and said, "The enlistment officer will be here this afternoon. Come around at two o'clock and be sworn in."
Promptly on the hour Jimmy presented himself.
"If you please, sir, I'd like to enlist."
"Had your physical examination?"
"Yes, sir."
"Name?"
"Perrin, sir; James Perrin."
The officer ran through the files and extracted a paper. He read it thoughtfully, frowning a little and drumming on the desk with his forefinger.
"Perrin," he said abruptly, "have they told you about the Reserve Mallet up at Soissons?"
"A little, sir. An ammunition train, isn't it?"
"More than that. We have nothing in our military organization that parallels this French unit of hundreds of five-ton trucks, hauling munitions and troops. It is named after its ranking officer, Commandant Mallet; it is called a reserve because it is not attached to any army, but feeds the front, any front, in times of stress."
Jimmy stiffened. He did not want to hear about dangerous services.
"Recently," the enlistment officer continued, "the United States has been asked to supply drivers for these trucks. It seems that the French automobile ranks have been seriously depleted and that unless we put our men at the wheels, the Reserve Mallet may fail in some crucial campaign. The plan is to make it a Franco-American unit. Understand?"
"Yes, sir," said Jimmy, not particularly interested.
"Driving a truck, as we know the job, is not particularly glamorous. It lacks all the elements of romance and glory. But piloting a five-tonner up there at the front, plunging through the night without lights over shell-pocked roads to where the guns are screaming, each truck carrying in behind another five tons of precious munitions or two dozen soldiers to stem the tide --- that calls for the best a man has in him. Doesn't it now?"
"Yes, sir," said Jimmy politely.
The officer leaned forward. "Perrin, I'm going to send you up to Soissons, with a letter to Captain Potter asking him to take you on as a driver."
The short hairs on the nape of Jimmy's neck bristled. "But---but I want to enlist for ambulance service." He forgot the "sir."
"I'm sorry." The officer looked again at the paper in his hand. "That's impossible. As a result of your physical examination, you have been rejected. The cause is marked, 'Color blind.'"
Color blind! He who had stood that first morning on the terrace of 21 rue Raynouard, drinking deep of the blue of the sky and the green of the park? He who had lifted his eyes beyond the Seine to the burnished silver of Eiffel Tower, the white of bridges, the gray and pink and salmon and red and marine of slate roofs? Color blind!
He knew what had happened. In the confusion of the crowd, the doctor had unwittingly added to Jimmy's record the diagnosis of some other fellow's drab sight. It was a mistake. He could prove it in less than a minute.
"I'm sorry," the officer said again. "But I'm confident the defect won't bar you from the Reserve Mallet."
Rejected! Well, he had tried honestly to enlist, and they wouldn't have him. There needn't be any more quibbling about duty; he could walk out of that building and be safe forever from the tentacles of military service.
Instead, he said, very slowly and distinctly, "Thank you, sir. If you will give me the letter to Captain Potter, I'll go to Soissons in the morning."