“Would you rather be starved to death or neatly smashed?  Do you prefer your misery long drawn out or all over in a jiffy?” Bob was joking now, though grimly enough.

“You tend to your part and let the Huns tend to theirs,” answered Jimmy.

They were almost down now.  As they approached the field which Bob had chosen for landing, what was their horror to see, but one field away, two German soldiers in their field gray!  They were armed with rifles, and appeared to be carrying full field kit.

No others were in sight.  The two burly Teutons looked in amazement at the aeroplane, as if unable to grasp the fact that it was plainly marked with the red, white and blue circles stamping it as a machine belonging to the Allied armies.

While the boys knew well where they were, and how impossible it seemed that they could escape capture eventually, the sight of two German soldiers right at the spot upon which they had so unfortunately been compelled to land, was a real disappointment to them.  Perhaps it was just such a disappointment, however, that was needed to key them up to prompt action.

Bob did not dare to try to clear the tall, thick hedge which separated the field he had chosen for a landing place from the one next to it.  He must stick to his original intention.  As he swooped down to the fairly level ground Dicky took one last glance at the pair of soldiers, who had started toward the point where they thought the plane would land.  The question in Dicky’s mind was as to whether or not the Boches would take a pot shot at the airmen before the machine came to rest.  Evidently that had not occurred to them, however, and they merely started on a run, with the humane idea of taking the aviators prisoner.

The machine taxied the full length of the pasture and went full tilt into the hedge at the end of it.  Luckily this hedge was just thick enough to stop the aeroplane effectively and yet prevent it from breaking through and capsizing.  While the machine did not go on through the hedge, the two boys did.  They crashed through and landed on the soft earth on the other side at almost the same moment.  Each turned quickly to the other as they picked themselves up.  Neither was seriously hurt, though Bob was badly shaken, and had scraped most of the skin off the front of both shins.  Dicky’s head had burrowed into the soft turf, and but for his aviator’s cap he might have been badly bruised.  That protection had saved him all injury save a skinned shoulder.

“Come on, let’s give ’em a run for it!” yelled Dicky, who was first to recover his breath.

He started off, keeping close to the hedge, Bob close on his heels.  As they approached the corner of the field they were faced with another hedge, evidently of much the same character as the one through which the boys had been hurled so unceremoniously a moment before.  Inspired by a sudden thought, he put on a burst of speed, ran straight up to the leafy barrier, and dove right at it, head first as he used to “hit the center” for dear old Brighton.  His maneuver did not carry him quite through, but he managed to wriggle on just in time to clear the way for Bob, who dived after him.