The next shell smashed on the other side of the slope where the road again came into sight; the car had not yet reached that part of the road, so Gerry knew that the German artillerymen were merely “registering” the road to be ready when the car should run into the open. But the car did not appear; instead, the girl crept about the side of the slope and advanced toward Gerry. She had lost her hat and the sun glowed and glinted upon glorious yellow hair. The pointer of the 77 did not see her or he disregarded her while he waited for the car to appear on the registered stretch of the road; but a machine gunner with the Jaegers got sight and opened upon the slope. Gerry could see the spurt of the bullets in the dry dust of the planted field; the girl instantly recognized she was fired at and she sprang sidewise and came forward. “Go back!” Gerry called. “Keep away!” She stumbled and rolled and Gerry gasped, sure that she was hit; but she regained her feet instantly and, crouching, ran in behind him. Her hands--those slender, soft but strong little hands which he had first touched in Mrs. Corliss’ conservatory weeks ago--grasped him and held him. “Keep down,” Gerry begged of her. “Keep down behind the engine!” “You!” she murmured to him. “I thought when I saw you in the air and when you fought them so, that it might be you! Where are you hurt; oh, how much?” “Not much; I don’t know where, exactly. Keep down behind the engine, Cynthia!” She was not hurt at all, he saw; and though the tangle of wires enmeshed his legs, he was able to turn about and seize her and press her down lower. For the machine gunner was spraying the wreck of the airplane now. She was working with her strong little hands, trying to untwist and unloop the wires to get him free when Gerry heard the motor noises of an airplane, descending. He gazed up and saw a German machine swooping a thousand feet above the ground. The pilot passed over them and, diving, came back five hundred feet lower; he took another look, circled and returned barely a hundred yards up. This time he would fire, Gerry knew; and it was impossible to find shield at the same time against the flying machine gun and the gun of the Jaegers. Gerry dragged his automatic from his holster and aimed, not with any hope of hitting the German machine, but merely to fire back when fired upon. But he could not twist himself far enough. “Give me the pistol,” he heard Cynthia say; and, as the German flyer came upon them with his machine gun jetting, he let her hand take the pistol; and while he lay enmeshed, helpless, he heard her firing. The machine-gun bullets from above splattered past them; the pilot had overflown. The girl had emptied the magazine of Gerry’s pistol and she demanded of him more cartridges. He took his pistol; reloaded it and now, when she reclaimed it, she crouched beside him and shot through a wooden strut and the wires which had been locking his legs in the wreckage. He pulled himself free.