CHAPTER TWELVE
In the Nick of Time
Huddled together like sardines under the car, the Belgian Sergeant and the two boys pressed fingers to their ears while all about them a whole world went mad with shot and shell. Never in all his life had Dave heard such a bellowing roar of crashing sound. For the first few seconds his entire body had been paralyzed with fear, but when he didn't die at once his brain grew kind of numb, and the roaring thunder didn't seem to have so much effect upon him. It wasn't because of a greater courage coming to his rescue. And it wasn't a lack of fear, either. It was simply that in the midst of a furious bombardment the minds of human beings are too stunned by the sound to register any kind of emotion.
And so the three of them just lay there under the car while the German gunners far back expended their wrath in the form of screaming steel, and mountains of flame and rolling thunder. In ten minutes it was all over. The range of the guns was changed and the barrage moved onward to some other objective. Yet neither of the three moved a muscle. It was as though each was waiting for the other to make the first move.
Eventually Dave could stand the suspense no longer. He jerked up his head without thinking and cracked it hard on the underside of the car. He let out a yelp of pain, and the sound of his voice seemed to release whatever was holding Freddy Farmer and the Belgian Sergeant. All three of them crawled out from under the car and got to their feet and looked around. Dave and Freddy gasped aloud. The Belgian Sergeant shrugged indifferently and muttered through his teeth. There just wasn't any road any more. It was completely lost in a vast area of smoking shell holes that seemed to stretch out in all directions as far as the eye could see. Blackened jagged stumps marked what had once been trees. Fields where spring grass had been growing up were now brown acres of piled up dirt and stones. And a spot where Dave had last seen a farm house was as bare as the palm of his hand.
"By the Saints, you two are a lucky charm!" the Sergeant suddenly exploded and bobbed his big head up and down vigorously. "If you could stay by my side always I would come out of this war alive without any trouble at all. By the Saints of Notre Dame, yes! Look at the car. It has not even been scratched! It is a miracle, nothing else!"
It was true! The small scouting car was bathed in dust and dirt but there wasn't so much as a scratch on it. The engine was even idling as smooth as could be. The Belgian Sergeant stared at it almost as though he were staring at a ghost. Then shaking his head and muttering through his big buck teeth, he climbed in behind the wheel.
"Nothing can possibly be as bad as that," he said. "Let us proceed at once while the Good Lady still smiles upon us. Name of all things wonderful, I can hardly believe I am still alive. En avant, mes enfants!"
With a sudden contempt for the shell blasted ground, that made Dave and Freddy grin in spite of the harrowing experience through which they had just past, the Sergeant sent the car scooting in and out around the craters with the careless ease of driving along a wide boulevard. In less time than it takes to tell about it he had driven clear out of the barrage area and was skirting around a patch of woods toward another and as yet untouched road. And to show the kind of stuff he was made of the man began singing joyfully at the top of his voice.
For the next half hour the war seemed to fade far away. True there were signs of it on all sides, and above their heads, but a certain feeling of security came to the boys as the Sergeant bumped them along roads and across fields skirting around shell holes, artillery batteries, and reserve troops being rushed up to the Front. Yet somehow all that didn't touch them, now. A few hours ago they had been hiding in enemy territory, two hunted prisoners of war. But now they were well behind the Belgian lines and speeding toward headquarters where they would deliver enemy position information that would be of great value to the Allies. Two youths, sixteen and seventeen, had beaten the Germans at their own game. Instead of revealing information of value to the Germans, they had escaped with German information valuable to the Allies.