ey been on a road they knew perfectly.
Here, with a curve just ahead that was an unknown quantity, there was
real danger in the sheer speed of the machine. Heavy as the car was, it
lurched and swayed from side to side. And simply to shut off the power
would not have been enough. Moreover, that was something both of them
would have feared to do. The slightest mischance, the most trifling
circumstance, might arouse suspicion in the watchers on the culvert. It
was necessary, and Ivan had warned them specially of this, to dash under
that at the highest possible speed for there would be stationed not
private soldiers alone, who would be likely to take it for granted that
an officer's coat and helmet meant that all was well, but an officer as
well.

And an officer would be curious as to the meaning of this solitary car,
rushing over a road that had been deserted, in all probability, for at
least two days. No, there could be no slowing down, even had the fearful
grade made it possible.

Then they flashed into the shadow. For just a moment, before they were
actually under the culvert, Fred, looking up, saw the white faces of
those above, staring curiously. Then he lowered his head, for he knew
that his face and Boris's gave the lie to their helmets. Streaked with
dust they both were, to be sure. There had been a mist in the low-lying
country through which they had come, and the flying dust of the higher,
drier parts of the road had caked on their faces. But they were not the
faces of officers.

Fred thought he heard a shout as they passed under the culvert. But
shouts were not enough to check them. What they both feared was a
volley. And that, as they passed out and beyond the menace of the
culvert, did not come.

"Look back! See if they are looking after us!" cried Boris.

"No!" Fred shouted in his ear, for now the rush of the wind made it
difficult for them to hear anything. "The light is on us now--they might
see too plainly. And, if we were officers going as fast as this, there
would be no reason for us to look back--Oh! Look out!"

They had come to the turn. So great was their speed that they seemed to
reach it before they were well out from the shadow of the culvert, yet
they had traveled two hundred yards or more. There was nothing really to
frighten Fred as he cried out unless it was the sudden imminence of the
turn, which had seemed much further away when they had first seen it. It
was less what he saw than some