"They must be there," Freddy said firmly. "You can still hear the guns up ahead, so there must be somebody besides Germans around. I say, look at that fog, or is it fog? Yes, it is. And it"s beginning to rain, too.
Well, thank goodness for that. We won"t be seen or heard so easily.
Right-o, Dave. Let"s get on with it. Like the chaps in the R.A.F. say, Tally-ho!"
"Tally-ho!" Dave echoed happily and started scrambling up out of the cave.
Walking side by side, and gripping hands to hold up the other fellow in case he slipped and started tumbling into a bomb crater, the two boys struck out boldly along the single line of track. Before they had traveled a hundred yards the railroad tracks stopped being what they were supposed to be. They became a long stretch of twisted steel and pulverized ties. But though the road bed was constantly pock marked with bomb craters it served as a guide eastward for their crunching footsteps.
Layers of fog came rolling in from the east, and with every step a fine chilling rain sprayed down upon them. But rather than being annoyed and uncomfortable, they were buoyed up by the miserable weather. It gave them added protection from any German patrols in the neighborhood. It hid them from the rest of the world of dull constant sound, and the shimmering glow of red to the east and to the south. There was more sound, and a more brilliant glow of red to the south, and as they heard it and saw it their hearts became even lighter. If there was all that sound to the south it must mean that the Germans had not been able to cut off the retreating armies at Dunkirk. And of course that was true, for as they trudged and stumbled along the bomb blasted strip of spur railroad track some fifty thousand do or die British soldiers were holding back the savagely attacking German hordes at Douai, and at the Ca.n.a.l de Bergues, so that some three hundred and thirty thousand of their comrades might escape the trap from Dunkirk and reach England in safety.
Of course Dave and Freddy didn"t know _that_ at the time. Yet, perhaps they sensed it unconsciously, for their step did become faster, their hearts lighter, and the hope they would get through somehow mounted higher and higher in their thoughts. And so on and on they went. A thousand times they stumbled over things in the darkness; went pitching together down into bomb craters, or barked their shins and raised lumps on their tough bodies. Always forward, though. They stopped talking to conserve their energy, for they had no idea how many miles of bomb blasted roadbed lay ahead of them. The fog and the rain dulled the sound of the guns so that they couldn"t tell if they were drawing nearer or actually heading away from them. And although they looked at it a million times apiece the dull red glow ahead of them seemed always to remain the same. It never once brightened up or faded down. It got so that it seemed as though they were walking on a treadmill. Walking, walking, yet never seeming to get any place. Never seeing anything different to give them proof they had covered ground. Every piece of twisted track they stumbled over was the same as the last. A bomb crater into which they fell sprawling was no different from all the others. And the darkness, the fog, the rain, the boom of the guns, and the shimmering red glow were always the same in the next second, in the next minute, and in the next hour.
Grit, courage, and a fighting spirit resolved never to give up, forced them forward foot after foot, yard after yard, and mile after mile. Even thoughts ceased to stir in their brains, and there was nothing there but the fierce burning flame that drove their tired legs and bodies forward.
Then, suddenly, their separate worlds seemed to shatter before their eyes in an explosion of sound. To Dave it seemed close to an eternity before the sound made sense in his dulled brain. Then in a flash he realized that nothing had exploded. A loud voice not three feet in front of them had bellowed out the challenge.
"_Halt!_"
Even then neither of the boys could grasp its true meaning. The voice shattered their hopes, gripped their hearts with fingers of ice, and seemed to drain every drop of blood from their bodies. Fate was having the big laugh on them at last. The worst, the one thing they had dreaded had come to pa.s.s. They had stumbled headlong into a nest of Germans!
"Halt, you blighters, "fore I run this through your bellies!"
Then truth crashed home, and the boys let out a gurgling cry of relief as they realized the voice was _speaking in English!_
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
_Wings Of Doom_
"Hold it!" Dave heard his own voice cry out in the darkness. "We"re not Germans!"
"No!" Freddy choked out. "We"re English and American! Are we near Dunkirk?"
There was a startled exclamation in the rain and fog, then the tiny beam of a buglight caught them in its glow. The light shook and there was a gasp of dumbfounded amazement.
"Strike me pink!" exclaimed the voice in back of the light. "What are you two young nippers doing here? And where"d you come from?"
The buglight was lowered and the two boys saw the dim outline of a British Tommie. His gas mask and ration kit were slung over his shoulder, and in his hands he carried a rifle with a wicked looking bayonet.
"We"re trying to reach Dunkirk," Freddy spoke up. "We"ve been hiding for the last two days at a railway junction called, Niort, I think it was.
Part of the sign had been blown away but I think that"s what it was."
"Niort?" the British soldier gasped. "Come off it, now, me lad! If you were at Niort how"d you get here? I suppose by a blinking train, eh?"
"No, we walked," Dave said. "Along what was left of the railroad. We missed the last train two nights ago. It pulled out when some Stukas arrived."
The British soldier whistled through his teeth, and flashed his buglight on them just to make sure he wasn"t talking to a couple of ghosts.
"Well, can you beat that!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "So you were left behind with the others, eh? I was on that blinking train, thank my lucky stars! The lads that were left had to march it all the way, and with Jerry throwing everything he had at them, too. Strike me pink! You know what you two nippers have done?"
"Sure," Dave said. "Walked about a million miles, the way we feel."
"It"s closer to eighteen or nineteen, lad," the Tommie said. "But that ain"t the half of it. You"ve walked _right through_ the blessed German line, that"s what you"ve done! Right through their blinking lines, and them not knowing about it! By George, will I have a tale to tell the lads at the pub if I ever get back home!"
"But how far are we from Dunkirk?" Freddy asked. "And is there any way to get there besides walking? I don"t think I can go another step."
The soldier jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
"See them flames?" he said. "That"s Dunkirk. About two miles it is. And it"s time for me to go in from my patrol anyway. I got a motor-bike and sidecar over there, yonder. You two can ride in the car. But we"d better hop it. It"s getting toward dawn and the Stukas will be coming over to raise merry Ned. But, wait a minute, mates. Who are you and what were you doing at Niort? Why, you ain"t even in uniform."
"This is Dave Dawson, an American," Freddy said. "And my name is Freddy Farmer. We"ve been trying to get back to England for days, and...."
"_What"s that?_" the soldier cut in excitedly. "Dawson and Farmer? The couple of American and English nippers, that stole a plane and all the rest of it? Blimey! Why didn"t you say so? Why you lads are heroes! The whole blinking army"s been talking of what you nippers did. Come along!
If there"s two lads that"s going to get a boat ride back home, it"s you. Yes, by George! I"m that anxious to get back home so"s to tell the lads, I"m fair ready to swim the blinking Channel, orders or no orders.
Come along!"
Without waiting for either of the boys to so much as open their mouths the soldier grabbed them each by the arm and hurried them off through the dark to the right. He must have known the way well, for they didn"t b.u.mp into a single thing. Presently he let go of them and dived into some bushes. He was out in almost no time pushing an army motorcycle and sidecar. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and straddled the seat.
"Hop in, lads!" he barked as he kicked his engine into life. "And hang on for your lives. The beach where they"re taking them off onto the ships ... and man, they"re bringing over anything that can float ... is on the far side of town. But the blinking town"s afire, and we have to go right through it. Here we go, and a double-double to the blasted Jerries!"
Though the two boys had wedged themselves down tight in the sidecar, the soldier tore off in such a rush that he practically rode right out from under them. Yelling any complaints would have been just a waste of breath. Besides, the soldier wouldn"t have heard them in the roar of his engine. So the boys simply concentrated on trying to stay in the sidecar, and breathed a prayerful hope that the soldier was an expert driver.
He was more than that. He was a miracle man on a motorcycle. He raced through the darkness without slackening his speed the fraction of a mile. The rain slithered down and the street glistened in the faint glow of his dimmed light. It looked like so much slippery black ice, and a hundred times Dave closed his eyes and waited for the sickening crash that never came. When, he dared open them again they were still hurtling forward making as much noise as a whole division of tanks.
The two miles to the ancient Channel city of Dunkirk was covered in just about as many minutes. In the last hundred yards the fog seemed to come to an end, and the rain to pa.s.s on behind them. Dave looked ahead and caught his breath sharply. Dunkirk looked like one gigantic horizon-to-horizon wall of licking tongues of flame and billowing smoke that towered high up into the sky. It was as though he had walked out of a dark room straight into the open mouth of a blast furnace. He impulsively cast a quick side glance at the soldier astride the motorcycle seat expecting to see an expression of alarm and dismay pa.s.s across the lean unshaven face. But no such thing did he see. The soldier simply lowered his head a bit, and the corners of his eyes tightened.
"Hang on, lads!" he bellowed without taking his eyes off the road. "Here comes the first of it, and it ain"t no ice box!"
No sooner had the last left his lips than the heat of the flaming buildings seemed to charge forward right into their faces. Dave and Freddy ducked their heads as the soldier had done, and in the matter of split seconds they had the sensation of hurtling straight across the mouth of a boiling volcano that shot up tongues of flame on all sides.
"Lean to the right, we"re turning that way!" came the soldier"s yell.
They leaned together and the motorcycle and sidecar went careening around the corner of a street. It seemed to hesitate halfway around and start to slide. But the driver skillfully checked the slide with a vicious motion on the wheel, and they went roaring up a smoke filled street. A moment or two later the driver yelled for them to lean again.
They did. In fact they did it no less than a dozen times during the next few minutes. And all the while the heat of the flames beat in at them from all sides, and the crash of falling walls, or of delayed action bombs going off, was constant heart freezing thunder in their ears.
Then suddenly they shot right through the middle of one final wall of fire and burst out onto a stretch of hard packed sand. It was several seconds before the heat left them and they felt rain soaked salt air strike against their faces. They gulped it into their lungs, and then both cried out in alarm as a squad of British soldiers seemed to rise right out of the sand in front of them. Their driver instantly stood up on his foot plates and roared above the sound of his engine.
"Out of the way!" he bellowed. "A couple of young heroes to get boat tickets from his nibs, the Commandant!"
Perhaps the group of soldiers heard him, or perhaps they just naturally didn"t want to run the risk of being bowled over by the on-rushing motorcycle. Anyway they leaped to the side and the driver and the two boys went banging on by without a single check in the speed. After another moment or so the soldier cut his engine, slammed on his brake and slid around to a full stop as his tires sent a shower of wet sand into the air.
"There you are, nippers!" he cried and vaulted from the seat. "How was that for a bit of a joy-ride, eh? She"s a good little motor bike, she is. A bit slow, but she"ll do. Now, wait half a minute while I go see if the Commandant"s about. Sit tight. I"ll be right back."
He flung the last back over his shoulder as he went racing off to the left. Neither Dave nor Freddy said anything. They were too busy fighting to get their breath back, and to unwedge themselves from the sidecar.
Eventually they were out on the sand and feeling themselves all over just to make sure no arms or legs or anything had been left behind.