Part 23 (1/2)
”They uns up ahead, so there must be so, or is it fog? Yes, it is And it's beginning to rain, too
Well, thank goodness for that We won't be seen or heard so easily
Right-o, Dave Let's get on with it Like the chaps in the RAF say, Tally-ho!”
”Tally-ho!” Dave echoed happily and started scraripping hands to hold up the other fellow in case he slipped and started tu into a bole line of track Before they had traveled a hundred yards the railroad tracks stopped being what they were supposed to be They beca stretch of twisted steel and pulverized ties But though the road bed was constantly pock uide eastward for their crunching footsteps
Layers of fog ca in fro rain sprayed down upon the annoyed and uncoave thehborhood It hid them from the rest of the world of dull constant sound, and the shi+low of red to the east and to the south There was low of red to the south, and as they heard it and saw it their hearts becahter If there was all that sound to the south it must mean that the Ger armies at Dunkirk And of course that was true, for as they trudged and stu the bomb blasted strip of spur railroad track so back the savagely attacking Gerues, so that soht escape the trap froland in safety
Of course Dave and Freddy didn't know _that_ at the time Yet, perhaps they sensed it unconsciously, for their step did becoet through sohts And so on and on they went A thousand ti together down into bomb craters, or barked their shi+ns and raised luh They stopped talking to conserve their energy, for they had no idea howand the rain dulled the sound of the guns so that they couldn't tell if they were drawing nearer or actually heading away froh they looked at it a low ahead of thehtened up or faded down It got so that it see, walking, yet never seeive theround Every piece of twisted track they stumbled over was the sa was no different fro, the rain, the booloere always the same in the next second, in the next hting spirit resolved never to give up, forced them forward foot after foot, yard after yard, and hts ceased to stir in their brains, and there was nothing there but the fierce burning flas and bodies forward
Then, suddenly, their separate worlds seemed to shatter before their eyes in an explosion of sound To Dave it seemed close to an eternity before the sound made sense in his dulled brain Then in a flash he realized that nothing had exploded A loud voice not three feet in front of thee
”_Halt!_”
Even then neither of the boys could grasp its true ripped their hearts with fingers of ice, and seemed to drain every drop of blood froh on the they had dreaded had co into a nest of Gerh your bellies!”
Then truth crashed ho cry of relief as they realized the voice was _speaking in English!+_
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
_Wings Of Doom_
”Hold it!” Dave heard his own voice cry out in the darkness ”We're not Gerlish and American! Are we near Dunkirk?”
There was a startled exclaht caught theasp of dumbfounded amazement
”Strike ht ”What are you two young nippers doing here? And where'd you coht was lowered and the two boys saw the diasover his shoulder, and in his hands he carried a rifle with a wicked looking bayonet
”We're trying to reach Dunkirk,” Freddy spoke up ”We've been hiding for the last two days at a railway junction called, Niort, I think it was
Part of the sign had been bloay but I think that's what it was”
”Niort?” the British soldier gasped ”Coet here? I suppose by a blinking train, eh?”
”No, alked,” Dave said ”Along as left of the railroad We o It pulled out when soh his teeth, and flashed his buglight on thehosts
”Well, can you beat that!” he ejaculated ”So you were left behind with the others, eh? I was on that blinking train, thank my lucky stars! The lads that were left had tohe had at them, too Strike me pink! You knohat you two nippers have done?”