It was a sad day for many folk in Belgium and Northern France, she said, when the American food stopped coming, but American soldiers should find that she remembered. As to getting across the river, she could guide the boys to a point where they might find it more easy to cross. She would return again at night and try to help them another stage their journey.
The day seemed brighter after the woman's visit. Night came at last, after an uneventful day of waiting, and with it the ample form of madame. She led the boys two miles eastward to where the ruins of a bridge still spanned part of the stream. Girders just below the water's surface made it possible to clamber across, she said, and there had not been a guard at that point for some months. The boys bade the good woman a very grateful good-by, and found the crossing much easier than they had expected to find it.
Soon they were plodding on by starlight, and by midnight had reached, unmolested, a road that seemed to lead due north. They went around all villages, and learned to consider dogs a nuisance in so doing. At first they were unduly nervous. Faint moonlight played strange games with their fancies. Once a tree-trunk held them at bay for some minutes before they discovered it was not a German with a rifle. It certainly looked like a German. A restless cow, changing her pasture, sent them flying to cover. A startled rabbit dashed across the road, and the boys flung themselves face downward in a gully in a twinkling. The night made odd, sounds, each one of sinister import to the fugitives. The wind sprang up and made noises that caused their hearts to jump into their throats half a dozen times.
The boys were sadly in need of food and drink. They decided to try the hospitality of some of the villages as they passed a hamlet. Approaching a house on the far side of a little cluster of dark dwellings, they lay by the door and under one of the windows for a few minutes, listening for the heavy breathing that might betoken German occupants. All seemed quiet and propitious, so Bob gave a gentle knock and explained in a low tone that two Americans, in hiding from the Germans, wished to enter. Sounds of commotion came from the cottage. A light flashed from a window, and a woman's shrill voice spoke the word "Americains" in anything but a low tone. A moment later, as they still waited for the door to open, a light appeared in the next cottage, and another feminine voice repeated the surprised ejaculation, "Les Americains!"
"Come on," said Dicky. "The sooner we get out of this the better.
That woman has raised the whole town."
The boys ran down the road quietly, but losing no time. Well it was that they did so, for they had not gone far before several shots were fired behind them, and one or two sinister bullets sang over their heads. They started running in good earnest then. Fortunately there was no pursuit. After a time they slowed down and again became a prey to all their former fears of night noises. A large bird flew close to Bob's head and gave him quite a scare. As they pressed on along the roadway, the clatter of hoof-beats coming toward them sent them to the roadside, where, a ditch offered welcome refuge.
Bob and Dicky jumped in, close together. At the bottom they hit something soft, which turned beneath them and gave a whistling grunt as their combined weight came down upon it. In an instant they realized that they had jumped full on top of a man. Who he was or what he was doing there was of no moment to the boys. A sound from him might mean their capture. Bob grabbed the man, grappled with him in the pitch dark, and choked him into unconsciousness, Dicky lending a hand. A troop of German cavalry clattered up. Just as the troop drew abreast, the order was given for them to slow from a trot into a walk. The boys held their breath. Gradually the horsemen drew past, then away. Bob waited until they were well in the distance, and then examined the poor fellow underneath. If the boys had been scared to have jumped on the man, the man had been more than scared to have had them do so.
There was all-round relief when the boys found the victim to be an elderly Belgian farmer; and the relief of the farmer himself as he gathered his scattered wits, to find that the boys had no designs further upon his welfare, was truly comic. The Germans, he said, had imposed severe penalties on inhabitants who roamed about the country-side between eight o'clock in the evening and daylight. His quest remained unexplained, except in so far as a sack of something the boys did not examine might have explained it. Bob advised the old man to remain where he was till morning light, and the boys pressed on.
Before dawn they took refuge in a shed behind a house whose stately lines were marred by the marks of bombardment.
The owner of the half-ruined house and the shed where they had taken refuge proved to be a fine old Belgian, courageous and full of resource. As soon as he found that the boys were escaping American airmen he brought food and drink to them in plenty. They were a long way from the Holland line, he said, but they might, with care, get across. Others had done so. He would look into the probabilities and possibilities, and let them know.