Blake frowned. He was on the point of telling the lad not to be idiotic, when Dick, reading his thoughts, hastened to explain.
"I can speak German well," he continued. "You see, I was three years at school in Mecklenburg—jolly rotten time I had, too!" he remarked in parenthesis. "In this great coat and flying helmet I don't suppose the simple villagers would guess that I was anything but a Hun aviator. I could try the Kopenick hoax over again. You see, we are bound to be captured if we can't get the job done, so it's all the same in the long run."
"There may be soldiers quartered in the village," objected Blake.
"Hardly likely," said Dick. "It is not on a railway line, and consequently troops are not likely to be stationed there. There might be some of the Landwehr or Landsturm. If so, they are Prussians. By passing myself off as a Saxon or a Badener I think that would account for my slight difference in accent."
"I'll go with you," said Athol.
"No, you don't," objected Dick with a laugh. "This is my show. You had your time the other day. If I pull it off all right, well and good; if not, well, we'll most likely have the pleasure of one another's society in a German prison camp."
"Very well, carry on," said Blake cordially. "And jolly good luck to you."
The already torrential rain was in itself an excuse for Dick to wear his aviator's coat buttoned tightly from his neck downwards, while his padded helmet pulled down over his face left little of his features exposed. As a precautionary measure he carried his revolver in its holster conspicuously displayed outside his coat.
Shouldering the bent bar, which, although remarkably tough, weighed less than seven pounds, Dick bade his comrades "au revoir," and set off on his three-mile tramp to the village.
It was slow progress. There was no beaten path. The coarse grass-land was ankle-deep in tenacious mud. The rain blotted out everything beyond a distance of two hundred yards. Not only was there the risk of missing the little hamlet, but the more serious danger of losing touch with the stranded battleplane, which at a distance of a hundred yards was an almost inconspicuous "hump" in the midst of a monotonous terrain devoid of anything in the nature of "bearings."