night the patrol boat picked up the
last piece of human wreckage, and dashed toward the coast of France.

CHAPTER IX

Barrow's unit had suffered sorely, but its gaps were filled from other
sources and fresh supplies received from home. Close upon the middle of
August it moved to take the field. This delay had not been without
advantages, perhaps the chief of which was a fluency in French that many
of his men were able to acquire. It had also given Jeb an opportunity to
acquire an entirely new viewpoint regarding the purposes of this war,
which had not penetrated to Hillsdale.

As the train now proceeded slowly, switching here and there to let other
strings of cars pass toward the front with more important freight, Jeb
felt that he was at last nearing the great adventure. His experience
with the submarine left an indelible effect without producing anything
like the result Tim would have desired. For Jeb had been involuntarily
projected into that crisis before being given time to think; he had
gone with the stream, not buoyed by courage but spurred by despair. Once
tossed into the hideous vortex, he simply had to get out--which was
vastly different from deliberately going into it with eyes ahead, as now
when he approached the battle front! Nevertheless, the torture he faced
upon the floating box, although unknown to him, left an impress for the
good.

As he sat uncomfortably drawn up on the seat of a third-class
compartment he missed Tim, and wondered dully if the regiment, which
that little son of Mars had said was waiting for him--at
attention!--could now be in the thick of things. He pictured Tim chasing
Germans with the same dogged nerve that he had chased and caught the
murderer of the little nurse. As evening fell, battle scenes grew vivid
in the twilit compartment, because he was thinking again! Whenever
speeding trains passed, their approaching rumbles would make him start,
and leave him sick in spirit; for each time he would at first mistake
them for the growling of distant guns, and he dreaded the hour when
these sounds would reach him. He despised the thought of guns, despised
the military trains, despised the war, the blood and maiming;--he
despised himself. He needed Tim!

"Is there anything on your mind, old fellow?" one of the unit asked him
kindly.

"Oh, no," he forced himself to laugh. "Have a cigarette, won't you?"

Early next morning, after an almost sleepless night, the unit
disembarke