of his lungs, but it was even less than a faint cry in the wilderness. The long lines of terror stricken refugees drowned him out. Like a gigantic black wave parted in the middle they swept by on both sides of the car. The Frenchman's face turned beet red with fury. He shouted, and ranted, and raved. But it was all to no avail. His voice and his actions were but a waste of breath and muscle energy. For a little while Dave tried to help him. He tried to reason with the mass of terrified humanity sweeping by the car. He begged, he pleaded, and he threatened, but it was as useless as thundering at the sun to turn off its light. No one paid him any attention. It is doubtful if anybody even heard him. Eventually he sank down on the seat, his voice exhausted and his throat sore.

He looked helplessly at Lieutenant Defoe. The French officer was a picture of misery, and of burning anger. Tears were in his eyes, and he was working his mouth though no sound came off his lips. In time he got back in the car and sank dejectedly behind the wheel.

"I am ashamed of my countrymen!" he shouted at Dave. "I am mortified that you should see this. But this is the curse of war. The people are like chickens when war comes. They do not stop to think or reason. They think of nothing but fleeing for their lives. They ... they are like children. I am ashamed."

The utter sadness and remorse in the officer's voice touched Dave deeply. He reached over and took hold of the Lieutenant's arm and pressed hard.

"That's okay, I understand, Lieutenant," he said. "Forget it. Look, we'll be stuck here forever if we don't do something. Let's try and get off to the side. I'll get out and push them aside, and you keep the car in low gear. Okay, take it easy, Lieutenant."

Some of the anger faded from the Frenchman's eyes and the corners of his mouth tilted in a faint smile.

"At your orders, mon Capitaine," he said. "Yes, you get out and warn them away, and I shall drive the car to the side of the road."

Dave returned his smile and slid out of the car. No sooner had his feet touched the road than he felt as though his body had been caught in the roaring torrent of a rampaging river. Like a chip of wood he was picked up and swept along, and it was several seconds before he was able to regain his footing and force his way back and around to the front of the car. There he put out both his hands and started waving the steady stream of babbling refugees to the left and to the right.

It was tedious, heartbreaking effort, and a hundred times he came within an ace of falling flat on the road under the crawling wheels of the Renault. But for his young strong body pushing and shoving this way and that Lieutenant Defoe would not have been able to move the car forward an inch. As it was the car did not travel more than fifty yards in a good half hour. By then Dave was drenched with his own sweat. His hat was gone and his clothes were slowly but surely being torn from his back.

Suddenly he saw Lieutenant Defoe at his shoulder and heard the Frenchman's voice shouting in his ear.

"It is useless, mon Capitaine! It is madness. We will not get any place with the car. The town of Beaumont is but a few kilometres ahead. There is an army post there. I shall request a military car and a driver. Ah me, I am desolate that this should happen. Here! Watch what you are doing! You! Let go of me, my old one! Attention!"

At that moment the French officer had been caught in the river of people. He struggled and he fought but he was relentlessly swept along and away from Dave's clutching hands. In almost the same moment Dave, himself, was caught up by the moving mass. It was either a case of moving along with the stream or stumbling to his hands and knees and being trampled under foot, or being run over by the heavy wheel of an ox cart or wagon. It was absolutely impossible, and an act of sheer suicide, to buck that packed throng.

And so Dave took the only course open to him. He moved along with the stream of refugees and inch by inch worked his way to the edge of the stream and into a clear space. There he paused for breath and strained his eyes for a glimpse of Lieutenant Defoe, but the Frenchman was nowhere to be seen. He had been virtually swallowed up by the stream of humanity moving relentlessly and blindly forward. Dave thought of the troops and the long lines of army cars he and Defoe had passed since leaving Paris, and shuddered at the thought. When the army and the populace met what would happen? Who would give way, or would anybody? In his mind's eye he pictured other French officers like Defoe striving to force the refugees to abandon their mad flight and return home. It was not a pretty picture to imagine. It was not a nice situation to contemplate. Troops with tanks and guns moving forward to meet the enemy but instead meeting thousands and thousands of their own flesh and blood.

"Please, God, put sense in the heads of these poor people!" Dave breathed softly to himself. "Tell them what they should do for the sake of France, and...."

Dave Dawson never finished that prayer. At that moment there came to his ears a new and entirely different sound. At first he could think only of tons of brick sliding down a slanting tin roof. Then suddenly he knew what it was, and in that same instant the rising hysterical scream of the passing throngs echoed his own thought.

"Les Boches! Les Boches! Take cover at once!"

Like thousands upon thousands of stampeded cattle the refugees broke ranks and went scattering madly and wildly in all directions. Carts and wagons were left where they had come to a halt on the road with their horses, or oxen, or dogs standing dumb eyed and drooping in their tracks. Dave stayed where he was for an instant, not moving an inch, and his eyes fixed upon the cluster of dots streaking down from the blue sky high overhead. In the twinkling of an eye they ceased to be dots. They became planes! German planes. Heinkels, and Messerschmitt 110's, and Stuka dive bombers. Winged messengers of doom howling down upon the road choked with wagons and carts, and countless numbers of helpless refugees.

Even as Dave saw them the leading ships opened fire. Tongues of jetting red flame spat downward, and the savage yammer of the aerial machine guns echoed above the blood chilling thunder of the engines. Tearing his eyes from that horrible sight Dave glanced back at the road. It was still filled with frantic men, women, and children, and at the spot directly under the diving planes bullets were cutting down human lives as swiftly as a keen edged scythe cuts down wheat.

His feet rooted to the ground, Dave stared in horror. Then suddenly one of the diving Stukas released its deadly bomb. The bomb struck the ground no more than twenty feet from the edge of the road. Red, orange, and yellow flame shot high into the air. A billowing cloud of smoke filled with dirt, and dust, and stones fountained upward. Then a mighty roar akin to the sound of worlds colliding seemed to hammer straight into his face. The next thing he realized he was flat on his back on the ground gasping and panting for air while from every direction came the screams of the wounded and the dying.

The screams seemed to release a hidden spring inside of him and make it possible for him to set himself into action. He scrambled to his feet, stared wild eyed up at the diving planes and shook his fist in white heat anger.

"You'll pay for this!" he shouted. "You'll pay for this if it takes the Allies a thousand years. And I'll do my share in helping them too!"

As the last left his lips he suddenly saw an old