They began running desperately toward the automobile.
CHAPTER XVII
THE ESCAPE
Their one chance of escape, as they both realized fully, was to get back to their automobile before the Germans recovered themselves sufficiently to begin searching for those who had brought such swift and terrible disaster upon their enterprise. And so they made no effort to move quietly or secretly now. To do so would have meant delay and delay was what they could not afford. The distance seemed far greater than when they had first traversed it. It seemed that they would never pass the house which the Germans had used as a base. But finally they reached it. And as they did so a door burst open, and they saw a light within.
A man, with the cap of a German officer, though otherwise he wore civilian clothes, came rushing out, tugging at his pistol. He had heard them running. By some bad chance, then, there had been a man—a German—left in the inn!
"Stop!" he cried, furiously.
But they kept on running. He could not see them, dazzled as he was by coming from the lighted house into the deep darkness of the road. But he was in front of them, and they slowed up, instinctively, though they still ran. And then they came into the light of the door. He started back.
"Kinder!" he cried. "Children!"
It was the exclamation of the Uhlan who had stopped them in the afternoon. But now it was uttered in a vastly different tone. The German was beside himself with rage. Perhaps he had had some heavy share of responsibility for the safety of the Zeppelins. But whether that were so or not, he was plainly maddened by the sight of the boys. He could scarcely have understood how completely they were responsible, but the way they were running and the direction whence they came proved only too clearly that they had had some hand in it.