"Need any help, Iggy?" asked Bob, as he saw the Polish lad shake his head as if in despair over some knotty point in the letter.
"Well, I maybe do," was the answer. "I should tell my mothar about how I was out on night-work, and I of help capture that Russian spy of the name Alexandraiovitch Tarbotchanitzitschi. That is a hard name to spell."
"Spell! You can't spell that name!" and Jimmy Blaise exploded in a laugh. "You can get your tongue around it a whole lot better than any of us, but it can't be spelled. Just put in a wheeze, a couple of sneezes and a hiccough. Then you'll have the name, Iggy."
"Well, I guess maybe you got it right," assented the Polish lad. "I just tell my mothar I of capture a Russian spy what the Germans have--what you call made bad. I tell her the name when I get home."
"That's the idea!" agreed Bob. "Home!" he exclaimed. "Say, fellows, where have I heard that word before?"
"That's what I was wondering," chimed in Roger Barlow. "It sort of rhymes with bath-tub, pie, broiled steaks----"
He was interrupted by a dog-eared magazine which Jimmy tossed at him, narrowly missing hitting the electric lamp by which Iggy was writing his letter.
"Here! Cheese it! Do you want to douse the glim?" expostulated Schnitzel. "We won this dugout from the Germans after too much hard work to let you put it on the blink now. It's the best place we've had to rest in for some time. Don't go putting it on the kazook!"
"I apologize," said Sergeant Jimmy, humbly enough. "It's great to have electric light, isn't it? Those Huns certainly went to a lot of work to make this place like home for their officers. Electric lights, decent berths, and places where you can take it easy and write letters."
"They never thought we'd get this far, I guess," remarked Bob.
And what he said was true. There had been a sudden and substantial advance on the part of the American army, and they had overwhelmed the German lines at this sector, running the Boches several miles back. Thus long lines of well-made German trenches, including a number of dugouts fitted up rather more elaborately than usual, were left in the hands of the Allies in general and the Americans in particular.
The one in which the five Brothers were taking their rest after some severe fighting had been arranged with electric lights, and after the battle the wires were repaired, the dynamo hitched on again, and the place rendered habitable. It was an exceptionally deep dugout, and was safe from all but the very heaviest bombardments of the German guns. And there had been bombardments from time to time ever since the Americans had swept irresistibly and victoriously over the Boche lines.