The Fritz Strafers: A Story of the Great War

"QUITE right for once, Moke. Young brothers are unmitigated nuisances," declared Hugh Holcombe. "If I hadn't been such a silly owl to let my young brother try his luck with my motor-bike, I wouldn't be sitting here in this muggy carriage. Any sign of Slogger yet?"

The youth addressed as Moke thrust his bulky head and shoulders out of the open window and made a deliberate survey of the road that ran steadily down the hillside until it merged into the station yard of the little town of Lynbury.

It was a case of somewhat regrettable inadvertence when fifteen years previously Sylvester's parents had had him christened in the name of Anthony Alexander; for when, in due course, the lad entered Claverdon College the fellows, the moment they saw his initials painted boldly upon his trunk and tuck-box, dubbed him "Moke," and the name stuck like tar.

He did not resent it, which showed tact. In fact, he rather rejoiced in the nickname. It harmonised with his slow, plodding, deliberate ways. Imprimis, he was a swot; modern languages were his forte, although he was no mean classical scholar for his age. Anything of a mechanical nature failed to interest him. He knew a motor-bike when he saw one, but that was all. Ask him "how it worked"—a question to which his companion would reply by a fusillade of highly technical explanations—and he was "bowled middle stump."

Hugh Holcombe was cast in a different mould. Except in point of age there was little in common between the two lads. Holcombe was tall for his age, and possessed the appearance of a budding athlete. Although in mufti—he was spending the last week of the Christmas vacation with an uncle at Southsea before rejoining Osborne College—there was a certain self-assurance that the natural outcome of a training that inspires manliness, self-reliance, and courage from the first moment that an embryo Nelson sets foot in the cradle of the Royal Navy.