rd.

Then, suddenly, their separate worlds seemed to shatter before their
eyes in an explosion of sound. To Dave it seemed close to an eternity
before the sound made sense in his dulled brain. Then in a flash he
realized that nothing had exploded. A loud voice not three feet in front
of them had bellowed out the challenge.

"_Halt!_"

Even then neither of the boys could grasp its true meaning. The voice
shattered their hopes, gripped their hearts with fingers of ice, and
seemed to drain every drop of blood from their bodies. Fate was having
the big laugh on them at last. The worst, the one thing they had
dreaded had come to pass. They had stumbled headlong into a nest of
Germans!

"Halt, you blighters, 'fore I run this through your bellies!"

Then truth crashed home, and the boys let out a gurgling cry of relief
as they realized the voice was _speaking in English!_

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

_Wings Of Doom_

"Hold it!" Dave heard his own voice cry out in the darkness. "We're not
Germans!"

"No!" Freddy choked out. "We're English and American! Are we near
Dunkirk?"

There was a startled exclamation in the rain and fog, then the tiny beam
of a buglight caught them in its glow. The light shook and there was a
gasp of dumbfounded amazement.

"Strike me pink!" exclaimed the voice in back of the light. "What are
you two young nippers doing here? And where'd you come from?"

The buglight was lowered and the two boys saw the dim outline of a
British Tommie. His gas mask and ration kit were slung over his
shoulder, and in his hands he carried a rifle with a wicked looking
bayonet.

"We're trying to reach Dunkirk," Freddy spoke up. "We've been hiding for
the last two days at a railway junction called, Niort, I think it was.
Part of the sign had been blown away but I think that's what it was."

"Niort?" the British soldier gasped. "Come off it, now, me lad! If you
were at Niort how'd you get here? I suppose by a blinking train, eh?"

"No, we walked," Dave said. "Along what was left of the railroad. We
missed the last train two nights ago. It pulled out when some Stukas
arrived."

The British soldier whistled through his teeth, and flashed his buglight
on them just to make sure he wasn't talking to a couple of ghosts.

"Well, can you beat that!" he ejaculated. "So you were left behind with
the others, eh? I was on that blinking train, thank my lucky stars! The
lads that were left had to march it all the way,