The tired Belgian officer clicked his heels and saluted the two boys.

They returned the salute and as Dave looked into the Belgian's eyes he saw a look there he would never forget as long as he lived. That officer knew what was coming toward him from the Albert Ca.n.a.l. He knew that he would stay where he was and face it. And he also knew that he would probably never live to see another sunrise. In a few words he had told of all that was in his thoughts. He had simply said, "Soon we shall be very busy, here."

The Belgian's loyalty and great courage stirred Dave to the depths of his soul. He impulsively reached out and grasped the officer's hand and shook it.

"I hope you beat the stuffing out of them. Lieutenant," he said in a rush of words. "Freddy and I will be rooting for you, and how!"

"You bet we will!" the English youth echoed. "I jolly well hope you chase them all the way back to Berlin!"

The Belgian officer made no reply. He smiled at them sadly and saluted again. The boys turned away and followed the big Sergeant through the patch of woods to the far side where a unit of small tanks and scouting cars was parked in under the trees. The Sergeant climbed in behind the wheel of the nearest scouting car and motioned the two youths to get in back. A couple of moments later the engine was doing its work and the Sergeant was skillfully tooling the car across open fields toward the southwest.

For a few moments Dave stared at the frenzied activity of the Belgian troops that were all around them. Inexperienced though he was in military technique, and so forth, he instinctively knew that the brave Belgians were making feverish preparations for a last ditch stand against the Germans. And with the picture of the Albert Ca.n.a.l crossing still fresh in his memory he knew in his heart that all he saw would be just a waste of gallant effort. Those German hordes, protected by their swarms of planes, would go right through as though the Belgians weren't there at all. It actually made his heart hurt to watch them and so he slumped down in the seat of the car, and let his body sway with the b.u.mps, and stared moodily at the back of the driver's neck.

Presently Freddy reached over and placed a hand on his knee and pressed it.

"Chin up, Dave!" he heard Freddy say. "We'll get through all right, you wait and see."

Dave shook his head and sat up a bit and grinned.

"Sure we'll make it," he said. "I'm not worrying about that. I was just thinking."

"About what?" Freddy asked.

"Well, just then I was thinking about that Arado I cracked up," Dave said. "I sure feel rotten about that. I wish I could have brought it down all in one piece."

"Good grief, forget it!" Freddy gasped. "It was wonderful of you to get it down at all. I would have killed us both, for fair. I can tell you, now, that I was very scared when you took off. I didn't know then how well you could fly, but I do, now. You're a little bit of all right, Dave. I mean that, really!"

"You're swell to say that, anyway," Dave grinned. "I'm still sorry, though, I had to go and crack it up. I don't know ... Well, I guess a plane to me is something like what his horse is to a cow puncher.

It's ... it's almost something human."

"I know what you mean, Dave."

"Do you, Freddy?" Dave echoed. "Well, that's the way it is. And I'll tell you something, but you'll probably think I'm nuts. I made an awful punk landing when I made my first solo. Cracked up the ship. I busted a wing and wiped the undercarriage right off, and didn't get a scratch.

But do you know? I felt so bad about it I busted right out bawling like a kid. My instructor was scared stiff. He thought something awful had happened to me. But when I finally cut it out he was swell about the whole thing. He said it was the normal reaction of a fellow who could really go for flying. It made me feel better anyway. Yeah, I sure feel pretty punk for busting up that Arado, even though it was a German crate."

Freddy started to speak but Dave didn't even hear the first word. The car had bounced out of a field and was being swung onto a road when the landscape on all four sides suddenly blossomed up with spouting geysers of brilliant red flame and towering columns of oily black smoke.

Thunderous sound rushed at them and seemed to lift the small scouting car straight up into the air.

"Shrapnel barrage!" the Sergeant screamed and slammed on the brakes.

"Take cover under the car at once!"

CHAPTER TWELVE

_In the Nick of Time_

Huddled together like sardines under the car, the Belgian Sergeant and the two boys pressed fingers to their ears while all about them a whole world went mad with shot and sh.e.l.l. Never in all his life had Dave heard such a bellowing roar of crashing sound. For the first few seconds his entire body had been paralyzed with fear, but when he didn't die at once his brain grew kind of numb, and the roaring thunder didn't seem to have so much effect upon him. It wasn't because of a greater courage coming to his rescue. And it wasn't a lack of fear, either. It was simply that in the midst of a furious bombardment the minds of human beings are too stunned by the sound to register any kind of emotion.

And so the three of them just lay there under the car while the German gunners far back expended their wrath in the form of screaming steel, and mountains of flame and rolling thunder. In ten minutes it was all over. The range of the guns was changed and the barrage moved onward to some other objective. Yet neither of the three moved a muscle. It was as though each was waiting for the other to make the first move.

Eventually Dave could stand the suspense no longer. He jerked up his head without thinking and cracked it hard on the underside of the car.

He let out a yelp of pain, and the sound of his voice seemed to release whatever was holding Freddy Farmer and the Belgian Sergeant. All three of them crawled out from under the car and got to their feet and looked around. Dave and Freddy gasped aloud. The Belgian Sergeant shrugged indifferently and muttered through his teeth. There just wasn't any road any more. It was completely lost in a vast area of smoking sh.e.l.l holes that seemed to stretch out in all directions as far as the eye could see. Blackened jagged stumps marked what had once been trees. Fields where spring gra.s.s had been growing up were now brown acres of piled up dirt and stones. And a spot where Dave had last seen a farm house was as bare as the palm of his hand.

"By the Saints, you two are a lucky charm!" the Sergeant suddenly exploded and bobbed his big head up and down vigorously. "If you could stay by my side always I would come out of this war alive without any trouble at all. By the Saints of Notre Dame, yes! Look at the car. It has not even been scratched! It is a miracle, nothing else!"

It was true! The small scouting car was bathed in dust and dirt but there wasn't so much as a scratch on it. The engine was even idling as smooth as could be. The Belgian Sergeant stared at it almost as though he were staring at a ghost. Then shaking his head and muttering through his big buck teeth, he climbed in behind the wheel.

"Nothing can possibly be as bad as that," he said. "Let us proceed at once while the Good Lady still smiles upon us. Name of all things wonderful, I can hardly believe I am still alive. _En avant, mes enfants!_"

With a sudden contempt for the sh.e.l.l blasted ground, that made Dave and Freddy grin in spite of the harrowing experience through which they had just past, the Sergeant sent the car scooting in and out around the craters with the careless ease of driving along a wide boulevard. In less time than it takes to tell about it he had driven clear out of the barrage area and was skirting around a patch of woods toward another and as yet untouched road. And to show the kind of stuff he was made of the man began singing joyfully at the top of his voice.

For the next half hour the war seemed to fade far away. True there were signs of it on all sides, and above their heads, but a certain feeling of security came to the boys as the Sergeant b.u.mped them along roads and across fields skirting around sh.e.l.l holes, artillery batteries, and reserve troops being rushed up to the Front. Yet somehow all that didn't touch them, now. A few hours ago they had been hiding in enemy territory, two hunted prisoners of war. But now they were well behind the Belgian lines and speeding toward headquarters where they would deliver enemy position information that would be of great value to the Allies. Two youths, sixteen and seventeen, had beaten the Germans at their own game. Instead of revealing information of value to the Germans, they had escaped with German information valuable to the Allies.

Dave leaned his head back and sighed restfully. It sure made a fellow feel good to have been of some help. And it made him feel twice as good to have a pal like Freddy Farmer along with him. Freddy had certainly proved his mettle in the tight corners. And regardless of what he'd said, Freddy probably would have done a better job of flying that Arado, too. At every turn the English youth popped up with a new side to him.

He sure was glad Freddy and his ambulance had come along when they had.

And, gee, just how long ago was that, anyway? Three days, or three years? It had been plenty long ago anyway.

At that moment Freddy suddenly sat forward and tapped the Sergeant on the shoulder.

"Why are we heading east?" he asked and pointed at the last rays of the setting sun. "If you're trying to get to Namur, you're going in the wrong direction."

"That is so," the Sergeant called back. "But, it is necessary. The Boches have cut the road, and we must go around them. Soon it will be dark. It will not be so hard when it is dark. Do not worry, my little one, we shall get there."

Freddy started to argue but seemed to think better of it. He sank back on the seat scowling thoughtfully at the setting sun. Dave looked at him a moment, and then spoke.

"What gives, Freddy?" he asked. "Do you think the Sergeant doesn't know what he's doing?"

"No, he's probably right," the English youth said. "If the Namur road has been cut by the Germans we've got to go around them, of course. But I've spent several summers in this part of Belgium, and...."

Freddy stopped short and leaned forward once more.

"Why can't we circle around them on the west, Sergeant?" he shouted.

"Can't you cut over and take the road leading south from Wavre?"

The Belgian let out a yell of consternation and stopped the car so suddenly he almost pitched the two boys right over the back of the front seat.

"The brain of a cat I have!" he shouted and thumped a big fist against his forehead. "But, of course, of course, my little one! Those bombs and sh.e.l.ls! They must have made scrambled eggs out of what I have in my head!"

Taking his foot off the brake the Belgian shifted back into low gear and got the car underway again. At a crossroads some hundred yards ahead he turned sharp right and fed gas to the engine. A moment later a machine gun yammered savagely behind them. Dave twisted around in the seat and saw an armored car bearing German army insignia racing for the turn-off they had taken, but from the opposite direction. There was a machine gun mounted on the car and a helmeted German soldier was striving to get them in his range.

The Belgian Sergeant took one quick glance back over his shoulder and instantly gave the engine all the gas it could take.

"A lucky charm you are indeed!" he shouted and hunched forward over the wheel. "If you had not put sense in my head, and I had not turned off on to this road, we would have run right into them. And that would have been bad, very bad. Name of the Saints, the Lieutenant will reduce me to a corporal when he hears of this!"

Neither Dave nor Freddy bothered to make any comment. To tell the truth they were too busy hanging on tight and trying to stay in the car as it rocketed forward seeming virtually to leap across sh.e.l.l holes in the road. The Sergeant perhaps did not have very many brains but he certainly knew how to handle that small scouting car. He skipped across sh.e.l.l holes, dodged and twisted about trees blown down across it, and roared right through scattered wreckage of bombed supply trucks and the like as though they weren't even there. And all the time the machine gun farther back snarled and yammered out its song of death.

The pursuing Germans had swung on to their road and were now striving desperately to overtake them. Dave stuck his head up to see if they had gained, but before he could see anything Freddy grabbed him around the waist and practically threw him down onto the floor of the car.