"Perhaps she had more right than you have to risk yours," the captain interposed, sharply scrutinizing his young friend's countenance. "At least, she is independent in her domestic relations. She has nobody nearer to her than Mam'selle Roberta."
"But to throw herself away for strangers! They are not even her own people, these French."
"You are doing your bit for them, just the same," Captain Dexter again reminded him.
"Ah, my case is different," Sanderson declared. "I felt that some of us Americans should do something for France—if only in gratitude. And why not I?"
"And why not Belinda?" returned the old shipmaster with sadness. "Ah, my boy, this enthusiasm and recklessness—it burns up youth! Better we old fellows to give our lives than the young. But, by Hannah!" he added, with disgust, "they refuse to use us. Want to put us on the shelf. Lay us by in drydock. Why, my three darters——"
"I know, Captain," interrupted Sanderson, foreseeing a long monologue if once the Yankee shipmaster got well into this theme. "But what can we do about finding Miss Melnotte?"
Every time they came around to that question it looked like facing a blank wall. Belinda was inside the enemy's lines—where and in what circumstances they could not imagine. They were not even sure that she still lived.
Nor was Sanderson's anxiety for Belinda the greater because he remained idle or took no chances himself during these stormy days. No twenty-four hours passed in which he did not flirt with death.
While the Nieuport he was using was being repaired, he requested work in the bombarding squadron and sailed back of the enemy's lines on two nights for the purpose of cutting railroad communication to the German front.
With their usual thoroughness and efficiency the enemy was thrusting a railroad line along the wedge they had driven into the French front. They assumed that they had gained another bit of France and would remain fixed there.