After more or less futile remonstrance, discussion and what not, they finally settled down for the remainder of the night, the boys insisting upon giving up the only habitable room to the women, though the latter urged that the young men take at least a blanket or so along. Blaine, being somewhat the stronger, declared that he would remain on watch for the first two hours, adjuring Erwin to get all the sleep he could. "Another thing; we haven't got much grub along. I don't know how much the women have, but if it is scarce we must remember them." In five minutes Orris was breathing heavily, taking full toll of slumber, for he was not so very strong and the day's happenings had exhausted him greatly. Blaine sought shelter under another angle of the basement, and after a vigorous struggle against somnolence, finally dropped off. After that the old ruin was silent. Midnight passed. Unceasing silence reigned. Suddenly there came a sound of planes coming down from the upper air. Finally a fretful voice rose up stridently, recklessly, saying through a muffled megaphone: "Ho, there -- below! Start up a flare -- a light, anything, so we can know where and how to land." Fortunately Erwin, who had really slept the longest, was roused by the closing words. He heard the sound of wings above, and at once apprehended. He had no flare, and no means at immediately to make a light. What should he do? Suddenly he remembered that Blaine carried a brilliant hand searchlight. In another instant he was rummaging about among Blaine's personal effects where he lay snoring. "G'way -- what you doin'? Who are ye, anyhow?" While so ran the sleeper's drowsy remonstrances Erwin secured the searchlight, and an instant later was sending its white rays upward. A minute later the black shadow of a huge bi plane hovered in a circle over the wide expanse of what once had been a trim lawn, but was now a desert of dirt, ashes, and crumbling masonry loosened from the walls. Meantime the added noise, further awakening Blaine, sent him scurrying to rekindle the dying fire they had made earlier in the night. By the time this was blazing one plane had alighted and the other was settling down further out. From these big planes stepped Captain Byers and Sergeant Brodno, both nervous, watchful, alert, and very wide awake. To say the boys were pleased to see them would be to put it mildly. In a few words the state in which Stanley and Bangs had reached the Station was told, when Byers, evidently on edge by the peculiar situation wherein they were now involved, spoke up sharply. "Where is that Chicago girl with her attendant? Also those papers? And how is it that I find you two so sleepy, way out here in the midst of the Boches? Don't you know we've had all sorts of trouble dodging in here so they wouldn't catch on? Oh -- h! Who is that?"