dental places along his line of
travel?

_What you got to do, you do_, he had said, and you cannot do it by going
half way and then letting some one else do the rest. He had read the
_Message to Garcia_ (as what scout has not), and did that bully
messenger--whatever his name was--turn back because the Cuban jungle was
too much for him? _He delivered the message to Garcia_, that was the
point. There were swamps, and dank, tangled, poisonous vines, and
venomous snakes, and the sickening breath of fever. _But he delivered
the message to Garcia._

It was sixty miles, Tom knew, from Aumale to Dieppe by the road. And he
must reach Dieppe not later than five o'clock. The road was a good road,
if it held nothing unexpected. The map showed it to be a good road, and
as far west as this there was small danger from shell holes.

Fifty miles, and one hour!

Swiftly along the dark road sped the dispatch-rider who had come from
the far-off blue hills of Alsace across the war-scorched area of
northern France into the din and fire and stenching suffocation and
red-running streams of Picardy _for service as required_. Past St. Prey
he rushed; past Thiueloy, and into Mortemer, and on to the hilly region
where the Eualine flows between its hilly banks. He was in and out of La
Tois in half a minute.

When he passed through Neufchatel several poilus, lounging at the
station, hailed him cheerily in French, but he paid no heed, and they
stood gaping, seeing his bent form and head thrust forward with its
shock of tow hair flying all about.

Twenty miles, and half an hour!

Through St. Authon he sped, raising a cloud of dust, his keen eyes
rivetted upon the road ahead, and down into the valley where a tributary
of the Bethune winds its troubled way--past Le Farge, past tiny,
picturesque Loix, into an area of 'lowland where an isolated cottage
seemed like a lonely spectre of the night as he passed, on through
Mernoy to the crossing at Chabris, and then----

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

"UNCLE SAM"

Tom Slade stood looking with consternation at the scene before him. His
trusty motorcycle which had borne him so far stood beside him, and as he
steadied it, it seemed as if this mute companion and co-patriot which he
had come to love, were sharing his utter dismay. Almost at his very feet
rushed a boisterous torrent, melting the packed earth of the road like
wax in a tropic sunshine, and carrying its devastating work of erosion
to the ver