OLD FRIENDS  
John, obeying Lannes' command, glanced down, as one looks over the side of a ship toward the sea, and he saw many horsemen galloping across the field. He recognized at once the Uhlans, and, for all he knew; they might be von Boehlen's own command.
 
"Hand me your glasses, will you?" he said.
 
When Lannes passed them to him he looked long and well, but he did not see any sign of a prisoner among the Prussians. He also searched the woods and other fields near by, but they were empty. The whole Prussian force was gathered beneath them. John breathed a deep sigh of relief.
 
"It's evident that Weber has escaped," he said. "Doubtless this was the very troop of Uhlans of which the Alsatian had caught a glimpse. He is clever and swift and I've no doubt he found a covert."
 
"I'm sorry we had to leave him," said Lannes, "but there was no other choice. I came to the tree to examine the flag, and being above I saw the Uhlans nearby before you did. Then I heard your shout and dropped down. But as I knew the Uhlans were coming for us I made you jump almost before you knew it, and we got away by a hair. The Arrow was struck twice, but the bullets glanced off its polished sides. There are two slight scars, but I can have them removed."
 
John laughed.
 
"Philip," he said, "I believe you love the Arrow as a fellow loves his best girl."
 
"Well spoken, Monsieur Jean the Scott, and the Arrow never fails me. And so you've been with Weber?"
 
"It's a long tale. I was in a boat crossing the Marne. It was sunk by one of the French shells, and I escaped. I reached the deserted cottage of a peasant, and Weber, who was wandering around, happened to come there, too. We've been trying to escape today, and we put that flag up in the tree as a sort of signal, while we hid among the vines below, until you should come, as he believed you would. He was right, but he was unlucky enough to be absent when you arrived." "Maybe it couldn't have happened in a better way. The Arrow can carry only two, and I don't know what we'd have done with him. He's a clever fellow and he'll make his way back to the army."
 
"I hope so, in fact I feel so. But, Philip, it's glorious to be with you again, and to be up here, where the bullets can't reach you."
 
"That is, so long as the German flyers don't come near enough to take shots at us."
 
"I don't see any in sight, and meanwhile I intend to be comfortable. Good old Arrow! The best little rescuer in the world! Lannes, I believe it's a large part of your business to fly about over fields of battle and rescue me."
 
"You certainly give me plenty of opportunities," laughed Lannes.
 
"What's been happening? I fancy that a lot of water has flowed under the bridges of the Marne since I left you."
 
"We continue to gain," replied Lannes, with quiet satisfaction. "We press the German armies back everywhere. Our supreme chief is a silent man, but he has delivered a master stroke. We've emerged from the very gulf of defeat and despair to the heights of victory. We're not only driving the Germans across the Marne, but we're driving them further. Moreover, their armies are cut apart, and one is fighting for its existence, just as the French and English were fighting for theirs in that terrible retreat from Mons and Charleroi."
 
"It's glorious, but we mustn't be too sanguine, Lannes. The powers that overcome the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires will not forget for a hundred years that they had a war."
 
"You're not telling me any news, Monsieur Jean the Scott. I've been in Germany often, and like you I've seen what they have and what they are. We're only beginning."
 
"Where are you going now, Philip?"
 
"Toward the end of our line. I've some dispatches for the commander of the British force. Your friends, Carstairs and Wharton, are there, and you may see them. But I understand that the Strangers are to remain with the French, so you, Carstairs and Wharton will have to consider yourselves Frenchmen and stay under our banner."
 
"That's all right. I hope we'll be under the command of General Vaugirard. Do you know anything of him?"
 
"Not today, but he was alive yesterday. Take the glasses now, John, will you, and be my eyes as you have been before. One needs to watch the heavens all the time."
 
John took Lannes' powerful glasses, and objects invisible before leaped into view.
 
"I see two or three rivers, a dozen villages, and troops," he said. "The troops are to the west, and although they are this side of the Marne, I should judge that they are ours."
 
"Ours undoubtedly," said Lannes, glancing the way John's glasses pointed. "Not less than a hundred thousand of our men have crossed the Marne at that point, and more will soon be coming. It's a part of the great wedge thrust forward by our chief. But keep your eye on the air, John. What do you see there?"
 
"Nothing that's near. In the east I barely catch seven or eight black dots that I take to be German aeroplanes, but they seem to be content with hovering over their own lines. They don't approach."
 
"Doubtless they don't, because they're beginning to watch the air over the Marne as a danger zone. That pretty little signal of yours may have scared them."
 
Lannes laughed. It was evident that he was in a most excellent humor.
 
"All right, have your fun," said John, showing his own teeth in a smile. "If our flag didn't frighten away the German army it at least achieved what we wanted, that is, it brought you. The whole episode would be perfect if it were not for the fact that we lost sight of Weber."
 
"I tell you again not to worry about him. That man has shown uncommon ability to take care of himself."
 
"All right. I'll let him go for the present. Hello, here we are crossing the Marne again, and without getting our feet wet."
 
"We're a good half mile above it, but we'll cross it once more soon. I'm following the shortest road to the British army and that takes us over a loop of the river."
 
"Yes, here we are recrossing, and now we're coming to a region of chequered fields, green and brown and yellow. I always like these varied colors of the French country. It's a beautiful land down there, Philip."
 
"So it is, but see if it isn't defaced by sixty or seventy thousand sunburnt men in khaki, the khaki often stained with blood. The men, too, should be tired to death, but you can't tell that from this height."
 
"The British army you mean? Yes, by all that's glorious, I see them, or at least a part of them! I see thousands of men lying down in the fields as if they were dead."
 
"They're not dead, though. They just drop in their tracks and sleep in any position."
 
"I saw the Germans doing that, too. I suppose we'll land soon, Philip, won't we? They've sighted us and a plane is coming forward to meet us."
 
"We'll make for the meadow over there just beyond the little stream. I think I can discern the general's marquee, and I must deliver my message as soon as possible. Wave to that fellow that we're friends."
 
An English aeroplane was now very near them and John, leaning over, made gestures of amity. Although the aviator's head was almost completely enshrouded in a hood, he discerned a typically British face.
 
"Kings of the air, with dispatches for your general!" John cried. He knew that the man would not hear him, but he was so exultant that he wanted to say something, to shout to him, or in the slang of his own land, to let off steam.
 
But while the English aviator could not understand the words the gestures were clear to him, and he waved a hand in friendly fashion. Then, wheeling in a fine circle, he came back by their side as an escort.
 
The Arrow, like a bird, folding its wings, sank gracefully into the meadow, and Lannes, hastily jumping out, asked John to look after the aeroplane. Then he rushed toward a group of officers, among whom he recognized the chief of the army.
 
John himself disembarked stiffly, and stretched his limbs, while several young Englishmen looked at him curiously. He had learned long since how to deal with Englishmen, that is to take no notice of them until they made their presence known, and then to acquiesce slowly and reluctantly in their existence. So, he took short steps back and forth on the grass, flexing and tensing his muscles, as abstractedly as if he were alone on a desert island.
 
"I say," said a handsome fair young man at last, "would you mind telling us, old chap, where you come from?"
 
John continued to stretch his muscles and took several long and deep breaths. After the delay he turned to the fair young man and said:
 
"Beg pardon, but did you speak to me?"
 
The Englishman flushed a little and pulled at his yellow mustache. An older man said:
 
"Don't press His Highness, Lord James. Don't you see that he's an American and therefore privileged?"
 
"I'm privileged," said John, "because I was with you fellows from Belgium to Paris, and since then I've been away saving you from the Germans."
 
Lord James laughed. He had a fine face and all embarrassment disappeared from it.
 
"We want to be friends," he said. "Shake hands."
 
John shook. He also shook the hand of the older man and several others. Then he explained who he was, and told who had come with him, none less than the famous young French aviator, Philip Lannes.
 
"Lannes," said Mr. Yellow Mustache, who, John soon learned, was Lord James Ivor. "Why, we've all heard of him. He's come to the chief with messages a half-dozen times since this battle began, and I judge from the way he rushed to him just now that he has another, that can't be delayed."
 
"I think so, too," said John, "although I don't know anything about it myself. He's a close-mouthed fellow. But do any of you happen to have heard of an Englishman, Carstairs, and an American, Wharton, who belong to a company called the Strangers in the French army, but who must be at present with you—that is, if they're alive?"
 
John's voice dropped a little, as he added the last words, but Lord James Ivor walked to the brow of a low hill, called to somebody beyond, and then walked back.
 
"It's a happy chance that I can tell you what you want to know," he said. "Those two men have been serving in my own company, and they're both alive and well. But they were lying on the grass there, dead to the world, that is, sleeping, as if they were two of the original seven sleepers."
 
Two figures appeared on the brow of the hill, gazed at first in a puzzled manner at John and then, uttering shouts of welcome, rushed toward him. Carstairs seized him by one hand and Wharton by the other.
 
"Not killed, I see," said Carstairs.
 
"Nor is he going to be killed," said Wharton.
 
"Now, where have you been?" asked Carstairs.
 
"Yes, where have you been?" asked Wharton.
 
"I've been taking a couple of pleasure trips with my friend, Lannes," replied John. "Between trips I was a prisoner of the Germans, and I've seen a lot of the great battle. Has the British army suffered much?"
 
A shade flitted over the face of Carstairs as he replied:
 
"We haven't been shot up so much since Waterloo. It's been appalling. For days and nights we've been fighting and marching. Whenever we stopped even for a moment we fell on the ground and were asleep before we touched it. Half the fellows I knew have been killed. I think as long as I live I'll hear the drumming of those guns in my ears, and, confound 'em, I still hear 'em in reality now. If you turn your attention to it you can hear the confounded business quite plainly! But what I do know, Scott, is that we've been winning! I don't know where I am and I haven't a clear idea of what I've been doing all the time, but as sure as we're in France the victory is ours."
 
"But won by the French chiefly" John could not keep from saying.
 
"Quite true. Our own army is not large, but it has done as much per man."
 
"And the moral support," added John. "The French have felt the presence of a friend, a friend, too, who in six months will be ten times as strong as he is now."
 
"Where is Lannes?" asked Wharton.
 
"He's got your job, Wharton," replied John with a smile. "He's Envoy Extraordinary and Bearer of Messages concerning Life and Death between the armies. As soon as he landed he went directly to the British commander, and they're now conferring in a tent. That will never happen to you. You will never be closeted with the leader of a great army."
 
"I don't know. I may not be able to fly like the Frenchman, but he can't handle the wireless as I can, and he isn't the chain-lightning chauffeur that Carstairs is. Please to remember those facts."
 
"I do. But here comes Lannes, the man of mystery."
 
Lannes seemed preoccupied, but he greeted Carstairs and Wharton warmly.
 
"I'm about to take another flight," he said. "No, thank you so much, but I've time neither to eat nor to drink. I must fly at once, though it's to be a short flight. Take care of my friend, Monsieur Jean the Scott, while I'm gone, won't you? Don't let him wander into German hands again, because I won't have time to go for him once more."
 
"We won't!" said Carstairs and Wharton with one voice. "Having got him back we're going to keep him."
 
Lannes smiling sprang into the Arrow. The willing young Englishmen gave it a mighty push, and rising into the blue afternoon sky he sailed away toward the south.
 
"He'll be back all right," said Carstairs. "I've come to the conclusion that nothing can ever catch that fellow. He's a wonder, he is. One of the most difficult jobs I have, Scott, is to give the French all the credit that's due 'em. I've been trained, as all other Englishmen were, to consider 'em pretty poor stuff that we've licked regularly for a thousand years, and here we suddenly find 'em heroes and brothers-in-arms. It's all the fault of the writers. Was it Shakespeare who said: 'Methinks that five Frenchmen on one pair of English legs did walk?'"
 
"No," said Lord James Ivor, "It was the other way around. 'Methinks that one Englishman on five pairs of French legs did walk.'"
 
"I'm not so sure about the number, either," interjected Wharton. "Are you positive it was five?"
 
"Whatever it was," said Carstairs, "the Frenchman was slandered, and by our own great bard, too. But come and take something with us, if Lord James, our immediate chief, is willing."
 
"He's willing, and he'll go with you," said Lord James Ivor. "I need a bite myself and in war like this a man can't afford to neglect food and drink, when the chance is offered."
 
"The habits of you Europeans are strong," said John, whose spirits were still exuberant. "If you didn't have to stop now and then to work or to fight you'd eat all the time. One meal would merge into another, making a beautiful, savory chain linked together. I know the Englishman's heaven perfectly well. It's made of lakes of ale, beer, porter and Scotch highballs, surrounded by high banks of cheese, mutton and roast beef."
 
"There could be worse heavens," said Carstairs, "and if it should happen that way it wouldn't be long before you Yankees would be trying to break out of your heaven and into ours. But here's a taste of it now, the cheese, for instance, and the beer, although it's in bottles."
 
A spry Tommy Atkins served them, and John, thankful at heart, ate and drank with the best of............