Verdun to Mezieres, near the historic field of Sedan; Dinant, Namur—names of everyday reading now, on the northern army route to Brussels. Colonel Bainbridge, Sergeant Scott, the Boy Aviators, Jimmy and Reddy were all in the march for the coast region. The Trouville jewels and gold had been sewn into four canvas belts, and one assigned to each of the boys, who wore them under their blouses. It was the intention of Henri and his young comrades to accompany the command until it reached the vicinity of some near coast point, where they planned to try for a ship voyage that would end in the English Channel. Jimmy had no military ties to hold him with the Coldstream Guards; he was a waif until he found his own command.
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“Give me even a day on the old stamping grounds,” he said, “and it’s me that will be a jolly boy.”
“Wish there was a bridge over the briny deep,” chimed in Billy, “and I know somebody who would soon start on the long walk to Bangor.”
Henri was thinking of his mother, and Reddy was never out of his dream of Paris.
West Flanders was the scene of incessant military operations, and like an island was cut off from the rest of Belgium, through the blowing up of the bridges leading thereto. Peasants were obliged to make emergency bridges from planks, and crawl along these to escape from the danger zone.
Among the last memories, outside of fighting, that the boys carried from Belgium, were of the bedraggled men and women suffering through cold and hunger.
The Germans had declared the territory west of the railroad running from Brussels to Antwerp an official war area, where nobody, including even Germans, were allowed to travel without a special military passport.
“Now,” said Jimmy, “we’re on the dead-line; even if we could get into Antwerp, it’s ten to one that we couldn’t get out, and so what’s the use of getting in?”
“But I’d rather take the chances of getting out of this wasp’s nest by water than by attempting[143] to break through any more wholesale killings on the land.”
That was Billy’s view. He was war-worn.
“But we’re going back by water,” assured Jimmy, “only it won’t have to be exactly from Antwerp. I’ve voyaged several times to Flushing—that’s in The Netherlands, you know—and once among the Dutch, and in the Scheldt river. I know a trick or two to get out on the North Sea.”
“You’re the captain on this trip,” conceded Henri; “if we can’t sail from Antwerp, let’s push along anywhere, so long as it’s up-coast, even to The Hague. Once in neutral territory, some of our troubles are over.”
“‘Some’ is the way to put it, Henri,” remarked Billy, “for if you had said ‘all our troubles’ I’d think you were figuring on our final rest at the bottom of the sea.”
“Well, it’s just this way,” continued Jimmy. “I believe I know a route, rounding Antwerp on the east, that will take us out of fighting ground, and in the town of Santvlieto, on the Scheldt, I have a friend who............