Excerpt
ON THE STREETS OF ANTWERP.
“Good-bye, Elmer, and you, too, Rooster!”
“It’s too bad we have to hurry home, and break up the Big Five Motorcycle Boys’ combination, just when we’ve been having such royal good times over in the country of the Great War!”
“But there was nothing else to do, Elmer, when you got that cable message telling you to take the first steamer home, as your mother was about to undergo an operation, and wanted to see you first.”
“And Rooster here chose to go along with you, because he’s got such a tender chicken heart he just hates to see all the misery and suffering these poor Belgians are enduring.”
“There’s the last call to go ashore. Come along, Josh, and you too, Hanky Panky. Boys, to be honest with you I more than half wish I was going along. Home would look mighty fine to me just now.”
“Oh! shucks! you’ll soon get over that feeling, Rod,” said the lanky boy called Josh, taking the alarm at once, for he seemed perfectly contented to stay where he was; “just wait till we’re spinning along on our bully machines down through Ostend, Dunkirk, and Calais to Boulogne, where we may take a steamer to the U. S. if we can find berths.”
“Be sure to keep a regular daily log of your happenings, Josh, so we can look it over when you get back home,” begged the boy who went by the strange nick-name of “Rooster,” doubtless because he crowed so much over his accomplishments.
“Good-bye, and good luck!” called out Elmer, waving his hand again.
“Remember us to everybody in Garland, particularly all the pretty girls!” shouted Hanky Panky, after the last exchange of handshakes, when with his two chums, Rod and Josh, he hurried down the gang-plank to the dock.
The steamer for London was leaving its Antwerp pier, and all seemed excitement. Many people were already fleeing madly from Belgium, now partly overrun by the vast invading army of the German Kaiser. At any day Antwerp was likely to be bombarded by the tremendous forty-two centimetre guns that had reduced the steel-domed forts at Liege and Namur, and allowed the conquering hosts entrance to Brussels.
While the trio on the dock continued to frantically return the salutes of their two chums as long as they could distinguish their figures on the hurricane deck of the staunch steamer bound down the Scheldt, a few brief explanations might not come in amiss. Possibly some of those who start to read this book may not have had the pleasure of meeting Rod and his four friends in previous volumes of this series.
The boys who wore the khaki lived in the enterprising town of Garland across the water in the States. How they came by the fine motorcycles they owned would be too long a story to narrate here, and those who are curious about the circumstances must be referred to earlier stories for the details.
They called their organization the Big Five because they planned to carry out numerous enterprises that might have daunted less courageous spirits. Rod Bradley was really the leader, though Elmer Overton, the Southern boy, often proved himself a good second....