Chapter 10 - Page 2

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