“No, indeed!” he declared. “I’m going to hang around here and watch the other smash-ups.”
“And I’m not suffering from shock so much that I can’t do the same,” said Dan, with a grin.
Both Don and Dan soon found, however, that they had been too much shaken up to enter very thoroughly into the spirit of the occasion. Nevertheless, they were of that age when the very idea of retiring from the field would have seemed like a deplorable surrender; so they remained until the majority of the pilots began their homeward march.
The boys were glad indeed to reach the Hotel d’Amerique. They removed the dirt and dust from their clothing and enjoyed a refreshing wash; and their feelings were then so far improved that each readily agreed to accompany the crowd, after supper, to Étainville and the club.
Thus the end of Don’s second day was passed very much as the first. They found Père Goubain, as usual, bubbling over with good-nature, and listened to the bits of philosophy which he expounded and to his tales of spies with the same interest as on the night before.
But there was something else which made their visit to the Café Rochambeau far more memorable than they had expected. While the rattle of tongues was in progress every one became aware of the fact that something was going on in the village street. The air was filled with the sounds of wheels jarring and rumbling over the cobbled highway, the steady tramping of horses’ hoofs and the voices of men.
Don and George were the first to rush outside. And what they saw gave them a thrill of pleasure and of exultation.
Yes, yes! The Yanks were not only coming but they had come. Actually!—an American battery was making its way over the lone street toward the front.
It was certainly a warlike scene over which the magic rays of the brilliant moon were playing. At the head of the procession rode the captain, mounted on a big bay horse. Close behind him followed the battery standard bearer carrying the red guidon, which lazily swayed to and fro. Silent and grim, the two horsemen suggested knights of old going forth to battle. Gun carriages and caissons drawn by long teams of mettlesome horses rattled and banged steadily past.
Now and again glinting lights flashed from horses’ trappings, or from the sinister, wicked-looking guns.