"That can hardly be permitted at this time," said the other in a deliberative manner. "There are several matters to be settled."

"Will we have to go into action with the regiment and fight?"

"Have you any objections to a.s.sisting us in return for the favors we have granted you?" asked the Kaiser with apparent surprise.

"Yes, sir, we have!" declared the boy, earnestly. "We are not at all concerned in the war and we don't wish to become engaged in it. We'd rather not shoot at anybody unless it is necessary to do so for our own protection or the defense of our country."

"Those are very n.o.ble sentiments, my lad," was the answer to this statement. "Just yet we cannot give you permission to depart, but we shall not require from you service that you are not able to give."

"Thank you, sir," both boys said in chorus.

"But, if you please," objected von Liebknecht, with a look of meaning in the direction of his superior, "the young men may be of great value to us in the future, and I suggest that they be held in reserve for any emergency that may arise."

"Not a bad idea, I'm sure," agreed the Kaiser. Then, turning to the boys, he added, "You will, of course, be expected to make no attempt at escape. Your matter will be decided later on."

In company with the officer who had guided them to the compartment they returned to the rear of the coach and fell to discussing the prospects the future held for them.

They were awakened from a sound sleep into which they had fallen to find that the train had made another stop and that the regiment was disembarking. Men and horses were all about the track, baggage was being hastily unloaded and every indication showed that their journey by rail was at an end.

"Ho, hum!" yawned Jimmie, before beginning his setting up exercise, in which the lads found much benefit, "nothing to do till to-morrow, eh?"

"Looks that way, I declare!" said Dave. "But if I'm a judge, this is tomorrow itself. I wonder are we going into action."

"Something's brewing as sure as fate!" declared the other. "We wouldn't unload like this just for exercise on a fine morning."

"It is a fine morning, sure enough," agreed Dave, "but I think it is going to rain. I thought I heard thunder just now."

"Does sound remarkably like thunder," said Jimmie, with a glance at the sky, "but," he continued, "there isn't a cloud in the sky, and a thunder storm seems about the last thing we could expect."

"What on earth is it, then?" queried Dave, puzzled at the strange sound that came to their ears. "I see some of the Uhlans noticing it, too.

Only they seem to be pleased about something."

"I know what it is!" announced Jimmie. "It's the sound of firing!"

"I believe you are correct, Jimmie," acknowledged Dave.

"Sure, I'm right!" declared the other. "Can't I tell what a cannon shot sounds like? I ought to, for I heard them some time ago, but from the other side of the lines."

"You did?" asked Dave, interestedly. "How was that?"

"Why," went on Jimmie, with just a touch of pride in his voice, "we were in France with the airship we had built before this present one.

We got nicely tangled up with the battling forces and nearly got blown to bits once. We got lost in the fog above the lines where the big sh.e.l.ls were flying around like mosquitoes."

"My word!" was Dave's astonished e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

"Yes," continued the red headed lad, "we thought once or twice we were goners, but got out after all. The airship lived through all of it and finally was drowned in the North Sea as we were trying to get home. I was certainly sorry to lose that airship."

"But you were fortunate to escape without losing your lives."

"Sure were," was Jimmie's comment. "But look there! There's some movement on foot or I'm mistaken. Wonder what it is?"

The boys were not long left in doubt. An officer came toward them apparently in some haste. As he approached he signalled the two to follow him to a position where the Uhlans were mounting their horses.

"You will follow these men," he said, as the lads drew near. He indicated two soldiers nearby who were mounted and leading two horses.

"h.e.l.lo, Otto!" said Jimmie with a smile, as he wrinkled his freckled nose. "And I declare! If little Fritz isn't on deck also!"

"Here comes the Kaiser and his staff," said Jimmie, directly the line was at rest. "He seems to be in a hurry about something."

"They're stopping here," announced Dave.

A group of approaching hors.e.m.e.n, at one side of which rode the Kaiser, drew rein exactly opposite the two lads. Jimmie's mount, in a somewhat restive mood, refused to remain standing, but gave the lad some trouble. In his effort to quiet the animal the lad did not notice that he was gradually drawing closer and closer to the Kaiser.

Presently he succeeded in quieting the horse and took time to glance in the direction in which the Kaiser was peering through a pair of binoculars. The lad saw stretching far below him a gradual slope that had once been wooded by a forest. Now, however, there stood only the shattered stumps of trees, indicating that the place had been subjected to a most galling fire from the enemy.

A puff of smoke caught his attention. With a startled exclamation he pointed to a small object flying through the air straight toward the position occupied by himself and the Kaiser's staff.

The next moment he kicked the Kaiser's mount in the ribs and dug his heels into the flank of his own horse. Both leaped forward.

CHAPTER XX

CAPTURED

"What was that noise?" asked Jack, instantly, as he busied himself with the levers in an effort to maintain the position of the Eagle.

"That sounded to me like one perfectly good aeroplane going to smash--just like that!" answered Ned, leaning over the rim of the fuselage and peering through the gla.s.ses.

"Was it the German who was pursuing us?" asked Harry, eagerly.

"I believe it was," declared Ned. "Yes," he went on, "I can see the smashed plane there beside the train now. That's peculiar!"

"What's peculiar?" asked Jack. "The train being there, or the plane, or what? Please be a little more explicit."

"No nonsense, now!" Ned replied. "I mean its peculiar how that plane came to be smashed that way. I didn't see anything drop on it."

"Perhaps a piece of the machinery gave way as he was starting."

"It needn't worry us a particle to explain how it happened," said Harry. "It's enough to know that the fellow can't chase us."

"That's a good thing, anyway," was Ned's comment.

Had the lads only known how close they had been to being again pursued they might not have felt so easy in their minds, but they a.s.sumed that their presence was not known to others than the pilot of the wrecked machine, and therefore felt secure.

"Now it's up to us to make a noise like a drum, I guess," said Jack.