d for a moment his
ability to guide the armored car along in it at a mile a minute.

John in his turn was filled with the rage of battle. It was not often
that one in his situation had a deadly machine gun at hand, ready to
turn upon his enemies. While Wharton fed it from the great supply of
ammunition in the car he turned a perfect stream of balls upon the
pursuing motor, spraying it from side to side like a hose. Wharton
looked up at his white strained face, in which his eyes burned like two
coals of fire, and then he looked at the bent back and shoulders of
Carstairs.

"Two madmen," he muttered. "A Britisher and a Yankee, mad at the same
time and in the same place, and I'm their keeper! Good Lord, did a man
ever before have such a job!"

Once he pulled John down a little as the machine guns in the pursuing
car were getting the range, but behind the armored sheath of their car
they were safe, for the present at least. Wharton regained his coolness
and retained it. But he held to his belief that he rode a race with
death, with one madman in front of him and another by his side.

Now and then the car took a frightful leap, and Wharton expected to land
beneath it, but it always came down right, with Carstairs driving it
faster and faster and Scott pouring balls from the machine gun and
talking to it lovingly, as if it were a thing of life.

It was Wharton's grim thought that he was about to die soon, but that he
would die gloriously. No common death for him, but one amid the crash of
motors, machine guns and cannon. Meanwhile steel rained around them, but
they were protected by the speed of their flight, and their armor. It
was hard for the Germans to hit a fleeting target in a curving road, and
the few balls or bullets that struck true fell harmless from the steel
plates.

Wharton's own blood began to leap. The two with him in the car might be
madmen, but they showed skill and vigor in their madness. The car sprang
in the air, but it always came down safely. It whirled at times on a
single wheel, but it would right itself, and go on at undiminished
speed.

And the other madman at the gun did not neglect precautions. He kept
himself well hidden behind the steel shield, and continued to spray the
pursuing line from right to left and from left to right with a stream of
projectiles.

On flew the car, down valleys and up slopes. It thundered across little
ridges, and fled through strips of forest. Then Wharton amid