Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/207

Rh the ships go on the rocks, it will be so many less against the Fatherland.’ Or, ‘That wireless  station at Rockford, it is working to our harm;  help to destroy it for the Fatherland.’ I sunk  my boat that they might no longer try to send  me on their errands. I have tried to flee from Appledore, but I could not go, there are my little house and my good friends here, and the  wide blue sea that I love so much. Then at last it came to their saying that if I have not  the spirit to help them here I must go back  and fight for Germany. I thought and thought, night and day I had nothing else in  my unhappy mind, and at last, partly because  I thought it was my duty, partly because I  was afraid, I said I would go.”

Billy looked at Johann and thought of those mild blue eyes of his being ordered to look  with approval on the sights of this most terrible of wars, thought of his gentle, capable  hands being set to the burning and pillaging  of stricken Belgium. He shuddered.

“I believed they had bruised my spirit until there was no more life in it,” Johann went on, “but when they came for me tonight, when we passed the point and I saw the lights of Captain Saulsby’s cottage, when I thought of fight-