“Now let’s get out of here!” he bid.
“You’re all right?” she asked.
He was testing his legs. “All right,” he assured.
The Jaeger machine gunner had interrupted his fire; and the airplane, which had attacked, was far away at this moment.
“I heard you were about here, Cynthia,” Gerry said. “That’s why—when I had the chance—I came this way.”
She made no reply as she watched the road to the rear upon which the refugees were appearing. A shell burst before them.
“I have to go to them!” Ruth cried.
“They’ll scatter; see; they’re doing it!” Gerry said, as the French ran separately through the fields till the rise of ground guarded them. “But we’d better skip now!”
He had removed his maps from his machine; warning her, he lit a match and ignited the wreckage. The flame, bursting from the gasoline, fed upon the varnished wing fabric, clouding up dense and heavy smoke which drifted with the breeze and screened them as they arose and, crouching, ran. The German machine gunner evidently looked upon the fire as the result of his shots and suspected no flight behind the smoke. The flyer, who had attacked, likewise seemed to see the fire as the result of his bullets. He turned away to other targets.
Gerry got Ruth, unhurt, to the crest of the slope; they slipped over it and for the moment were safe. The car which Ruth had driven stood in the road.