Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/196

 He and she, and the rest, were going back—back, kilometer after kilometer and yet encountering no strong force of English or French in position to hold that land; and he knew that if that depth of front was being abandoned as far away to the right and as far away to the left as he could see, resistance must have broken down over a much greater front. Indeed, Gerry had himself observed from his airplane something of the length of the line where the allies were retreating; but he had not been able, when in the air, and passing in a few seconds over a kilometer, to feel the disaster as now he felt it in the swaying seat of the half-wrecked truck creeping along at the head of a column of refugees. This land which the Germans were again overrunning in a day was the strip which the English had freed the year before only through the long, murderous months of the "blood baths" of the Somme.

"Do you remember an English officer on the Ribot," Ruth was asking of him, "whom I called '1582?

"He's about here?" Gerry inquired.

"No; but several of his sort are—one particularly, a Lieutenant Haddon-Staples; I called him, to myself, '1583.

"What do you think of his sort now?" Gerry asked, confidently.

Ruth's eyes filled suddenly so that she had to raise a hand from the driving-wheel to dash away the wetness which blurred the road.

"They're the most wonderful sportsmen in the world!" Ruth said. "They don't care about odds against them; or at least they don't complain. Oh, that's not the word;