I must get
busy."
Another twist of the levers and the plane jumped forward, for the first
time feeling no resistance of the storm. And, while he was glancing
around for more light, out he shot like an arrow from a bow into the
clear sunlight, the earth near -- too near, in fact.
Back of him the storm clouds were whisking themselves away so rapidly
that the transition was almost staggering. And below -- what was it he
now saw?
For answer, almost before his own mind had sensed the change, there
came the spatter of Archies by the dozen and the menacing roar of
machine guns, sheltered here and there over the scraggy plain within
the pill-boxes that have of late been substituted for the vanishing
trench lines. Artillery bombardments by the Allies have so devastated
certain regions that trenches have become impossible; hence the
concrete pillboxes.
"Lucky I've some gasoline left," thought Erwin, surprised but not
unduly alarmed. "It's a race now between me and the bullets."
Instantly he put on high speed, at the same time rising in zigzags
while the bombardment continued increasingly.
Right ahead, however, he saw what looked like a communicating
underground trench; and at certain intervals were openings. These
openings revealed to him a blurring, moving mass, muddy gray, yet with
glints here and there as of some substance brighter.
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