"Two madmen," he muttered. "A Britisher and a Yankee, mad at the same time and in the same place, and I'm their keeper! Good Lord, did a man ever before have such a job!"
Once he pulled John down a little as the machine guns in the pursuing car were getting the range, but behind the armored sheath of their car they were safe, for the present at least. Wharton regained his coolness and retained it. But he held to his belief that he rode a race with death, with one madman in front of him and another by his side.
Now and then the car took a frightful leap, and Wharton expected to land beneath it, but it always came down right, with Carstairs driving it faster and faster and Scott pouring balls from the machine gun and talking to it lovingly, as if it were a thing of life.
It was Wharton's grim thought that he was about to die soon, but that he would die gloriously. No common death for him, but one amid the crash of motors, machine guns and cannon. Meanwhile steel rained around them, but they were protected by the speed of their flight, and their armor. It was hard for the Germans to hit a fleeting target in a curving road, and the few balls or bullets that struck true fell harmless from the steel plates.
Wharton's own blood began to leap. The two with him in the car might be madmen, but they showed skill and vigor in their madness. The car sprang in the air, but it always came down safely. It whirled at times on a single wheel, but it would right itself, and go on at undiminished speed.
And the other madman at the gun did not neglect precautions. He kept himself well hidden behind the steel shield, and continued to spray the pursuing line from right to left and from left to right with a stream of projectiles.
On flew the car, down valleys and up slopes. It thundered across little ridges, and fled through strips of forest. Then Wharton amid their own roar heard the same deep steady rumble that had preceded the coming of the first German force. The sound was so similar he knew instinctively that it was made by a second detachment, advancing along the same road, but miles back. Their own headlong speed would carry them directly into it, and, as he saw it, they were completely trapped.
He leaned over, put a hand on the shoulder of Carstairs, and shouted in his ear:
"A second army of the enemy is in front, and we're going into it at the rate of a mile a minute!"
"Never mind!" Carstairs shouted back. "I know a little road not far ahead, leading off from this almost due westward. I'm going to take it, but it's a sharp turn. Hold tight you two!"