"I guess it only happened tonight," said Tom, "or more gas would have leaked out. Let's hunt for the eats and things."

The wreckage of the car proved a veritable treasure-house. There was a flashlight and a telescopic field gla.s.s, both of which Tom s.n.a.t.c.hed up with an eagerness which could not have been greater if they had been made of solid gold. In the smashed locker were two good-sized tins of biscuit, a bottle of wine and several small tins of meat. Tom emptied out the wine and filled the bottle with water out of the five-gallon tank, from which they also refreshed their parched throats. The food they "commandeered" to the full capacity of their ragged pockets.

"And look at this," said Archer, hauling out a blouse such as the hanging German wore; "what d'ye say if I wearr it, hey? And the cap, too? I'll look like an observation ballooner, or whatever you call 'em."

"Good idea," said Tom, "and look!"

"A souveneerr?" cried Archer.

"The best _you_ ever saw," Tom answered, rooting in the engine tool chest by the aid of the flashlight and hauling out a pair of rubber gloves.

"What good are those?" said Archer, somewhat scornfully.

"_What good!_ They're a pa.s.sport into Switzerland."

"Do you have to wear rubber gloves in Switzerland?" Archer asked innocently, as he ravenously munched a biscuit.

"No, but you have to wear 'em when you're handling electrified wire,"

said Tom in his stolid way.

"G-o-o-d _night_! We fell in soft, didn't we!"

Indeed, for a couple of hapless, ragged wanderers, subsisting wholly by their wits, they had "fallen in soft." It seemed that the very things needed by two fugitives in a hostile country were the very things needed in an observation balloon. One unpleasant task Tom had to perform, and that was to remove the blouse from the hanging German and don it himself, which he did, not without some shuddering hesitation.

"It's the only thing," he said, "that would make anybody think somebody's been here, and that's just what we've got to look out for.

The other things won't be missed, but if anybody should come here and see him hanging there without his coat they'd wonder where it was."

However, this was a remote danger, since probably no one knew of the disaster.

Tom's chief difficulty was in restricting that indefatigable souvenir hunter, Archer, from loading himself down with every conceivable kind of useless but interesting paraphernalia.

"You're just like a tenderfoot when he starts out camping," said Tom.

"He takes fancy cushions and a lot of stuff; he'd take a bra.s.s bed and a rolltop desk and a couple of pianos if you'd let him," he added, with rather more humor than he usually showed. "All we're going to take is the biscuits and two cans of meat and the flashlight and the field gla.s.s and the bottle, and, let's see----"

"I don't have to leave this dandy ivory cigar-holderr, do I?" Archer interrupted. "We could use it for----"

"Yes, you do, and we're going to leave that cartridge belt, too, so chuck it," ordered Tom. "If anybody _should_ come up here we don't want 'em to think somebody else was here before 'em. All we're going to take is just what I said--some of the eats, and the flashlight and the field gla.s.s and the bottle and the rubber gloves and the pliers and--that's all."

"Not even this dial-faced thing?" pleaded Archer.

"That's a gas gauge or something," said Tom. "Come on now, let's get away from here."

Archer pointed the flashlight and cast a lingering farewell gaze upon a large megaphone. For a brief moment he had wild thoughts of trying to persuade Tom that this would prove a blessing as a hat, shedding the pelting Alsatian rains like a church steeple. But he did not quite dare.

CHAPTER XIV

A RISKY DECISION

"Did you notice that Victrola?" Archer asked fondly.

"Yes, it was busted; did you want that, too?"

"We might have used the arm for a chimney if we were building a fire,"

Archer ventured.

"We'd look nice crawling through these mountains with a Victrola in our arms. The Fritzies always have a lot of that kind of junk with 'em. They had one on the submarine that picked me up that time."

They were both now clad in the semi-military blouses worn by the German "sausage men" and felt that to a casual observer at least they were disguised. It gave them a feeling of security even in these unfrequented highlands. And their little store of food refreshed their spirits and gave them new hope.

What cheered Tom most of all was his precious possession, the rubber gloves, a detail of equipment which every gas-engine mechanic is pretty sure to have, though, he regarded the discovery as a rare find. He was thankful to have found them, for the terrific deadly current which he knew rushed through the formidable wire entanglement along the frontier had haunted him and baffled his wits. It was characteristic of Tom to think and plan far ahead.

All the next day they journeyed through the hills, making a long detour to avoid a hamlet, and meeting no one. And at night, under the close-knit shelter of a great pine tree, they rested their weary bodies and ate the last of their meat and biscuits.

When Tom roused Archer in the morning it was to show him a surprising view. From their wooded height they could look down across a vast tract of open country which extended eastward as far as they could see, running north and south between steep banks. Converging toward it out of the hills they had followed, they could see a bird's-eye panorama of the broadening streams, the trickling beginnings of which they had forded and drunk from, and their eyes followed the majestic water southward until it wound away among the frowning heights which they had all but entered.

"It's the Rhine," said Archer, "and that's the real Black Forest where it goes. Those mountains are in Baden; now I know."

"Didn't I say there must be a big river over that way?" said Tom. "I knew from the way that ridge went. It's a big one, huh?"

"You said it! Maybe that twig you threw in to see which way it went is floating down the Rhine now. They'll use it in the Black Forest to make a toy out of, maybe."

"I s'pose you'd like to have it for a souvenir."

"If we could make a raft we could sail right down, hey?" queried Archer doubtfully.

Tom shook his head. "It must pa.s.s through big cities," he said, "and we're safe in the mountains. Anyway, it flows the other way," he added.

It was not difficult now for them to piece out a fairly accurate map of the locality about them. They were indeed near the eastern edge of Alsace where the Rhine, flowing in a northeasterly direction, separates the "lost province" from the Duchy of Baden. To the south, on the Baden side, the mighty hills rolled away in crowding confusion as far as they could see, and these they knew held that dim, romantic wilderness, the Black Forest, the outskirts of which they had entered.

Directly below the hill on which they rested was a tiny hamlet nestling in the shadow of the steep ascent, and when Tom climbed a tree for a better view he could see to the southwest close by the river a surging metropolis with countless chimneys sending their black smoke up into the gray early morning sky.

"I bet it's Berrlin," shouted Archer. "Gee, we'll be the firrst to get therre, hey? It might be Berrlin, hey?" he added with less buoyancy, seeing Tom's dry smile.

"It might be New York or Philadelphia," said Tom, "only it ain't. I guess it must be Stra.s.sbourg. I heard that was the biggest place in Alsace."

They looked at it through their field gla.s.s and decided that it was about twenty miles distant. More to the purpose was the little hamlet scarce half a mile below them, for their provisions were gone and as Tom scanned the country with the gla.s.s he could see no streams to the southward converging toward the river. He feared to have to go another twenty-four hours, perhaps, without food and water.

"We got to decide another thing before we go any farther, too," he said.

"If we're going to hike into those mountains we've got to cross the river and we'll be outside of Alsace. We won't meet any French people and Frenchy's b.u.t.ton won't do us any good over there. But if we stay on this side we've got to go through open country. I don't know which is better."

They were indeed at a point where they must choose between the doubtful hospitality of Alsace and the safe enveloping welcome of the mountain fastnesses. Like the true scout he was, Tom inclined to the latter.

"Do you notice," he said, looking down through the gla.s.s, "that house that looks as if it was whitewashed? It's far away from the others."