Our Aviator Boys had not for a long time been accustomed to use their legs as vigorously and so continuously as required to make an endurance record on a bicycle. They had no great use for legs when flying. But they were light-hearted, and had been well fed, had enough in their knapsacks to stave off hunger for several days, and, barring the fact that Henri was still nursing a sore shoulder, ready to meet the best or the worst. Billy carried[48] a compass, also a mind full of directions from Marie, and firmly believed that he could not miss the good old town in the fertile meadow on the little river Mander. At least Henri and himself could live or die trying. They had already observed indications that, even with the strenuous call to the colors of the Belgian men, the little kingdom was thickly populated, and about every square inch of farm land was under close cultivation.
“Suppose people lived this close together in Texas,” remarked Billy, as they pedaled along; “why, a man as tall across the front as Colonel McCready wouldn’t have room enough to turn around.”
“Yes, and from what we have heard of the war crowd working this way we’ll have to have more room than this to keep from running into them.” Henri was not in the same mood that he was when he found the a?roplane tanks empty.
“Nothing like a scare-mark so far,” was Billy’s comment. “I have seen only women in the fields.”
“Even the dogs have work to do here.”
Henri went on to explain that the small farmers, as a rule, cannot afford to keep horses, and just now could not keep them if they had them.
The boys had been fortunate in their first day’s travel as cyclists, in that they had not even fallen in with the stragglers of the contending armies reported[49] in terrible conflict inside the Dixmude-Nieuport line.
In the afternoon of the second day, however, they took the wrong road, one leading to Bixchoote.
In the distance they heard heavy and continuous artillery fire, and decided to turn back. “Out of the frying-pan into what next?” as Billy put it, when they found the woods north of Ypres were aflame with bursting shells. Fighting in front and fighting in the rear.
“The sides are still open,” declared Henri, “even if both ends are plugged.”
“But which side shall it be?” asked Billy.
The situation was one of great peril to the boys.
To get a better idea of the lay of the land, they rolled their bicycles into the woods alongside the road and climbed into the low hanging branches of a huge tree, then ascended to the very top of this monarch of the forest.
From their lofty perch they could see quite a distance in all directions, but they had no eyes for any part of the panorama after the first glance to the south. The firing line stretched out before their vision, presenting an awe-inspiring scene.
The shell fire from the German batteries was so terrific that Belgian soldiers and French marines were continually being blown out of their dugouts and sent scattering to cover. The distant town was[50] invisible except for flames and smoke clouds rising above it.
The tide of battle streamed ............