He had no flare, and no means at immediately to make a
light. What should he do? Suddenly he remembered that Blaine carried
a brilliant hand searchlight. In another instant he was rummaging
about among Blaine's personal effects where he lay snoring.
"G'way -- what you doin'? Who are ye, anyhow?"
While so ran the sleeper's drowsy remonstrances Erwin secured the
searchlight, and an instant later was sending its white rays upward. A
minute later the black shadow of a huge bi plane hovered in a circle
over the wide expanse of what once had been a trim lawn, but was now a
desert of dirt, ashes, and crumbling masonry loosened from the walls.
Meantime the added noise, further awakening Blaine, sent him scurrying
to rekindle the dying fire they had made earlier in the night. By the
time this was blazing one plane had alighted and the other was settling
down further out. From these big planes stepped Captain Byers and
Sergeant Brodno, both nervous, watchful, alert, and very wide awake.
To say the boys were pleased to see them would be to put it mildly. In
a few words the state in which Stanley and Bangs had reached the
Station was told, when Byers, evidently on edge by the peculiar
situation wherein they were now involved, spoke up sharply.
"Where is that Chicago girl with her attendant? Also those papers?
And how is it that I find you two so sleepy, way out here in the midst
of the Boches? Don't you know we've had all sorts of trouble dodging
in here so they wouldn't catch on? Oh -- h! Who is that?"
Captain Byers whirled and found that he was confronting a smiling young
girl, already bundled up as if for a journey.
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