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 very spot where he stood. In a kind of cold despair, he stooped, reached for a board which lay near, and retreating a little, stood upon it, watching the surging water in its heedless career. This one board was all that was left of the bridge over which Tom Slade and _Uncle Sam_ were to have rushed in their race with the dawn. Already the first glimmering of gray was discernible in the sky behind him, and Tom looked at _Uncle Sam_ as if for council in his dilemma. The dawn would not require any bridge to get across. "We're checked in our grand drive, kind of," he said, with a pathetic disappointment which his odd way of putting it did not disguise. "We're checked, that's all, just like the Germans were--kind of." He knelt and let down the rest of his machine so that it might stand unaided, as if he would be considerate of those mud-covered, weary wheels. And meanwhile the minutes passed. "Anyway, you did _your_ part," he muttered. And then, "If you only could swim." It was evident that the recent rains had swollen the stream which ordinarily flowed in the narrow bed between slanting shores so that the rushing water filled the whole space between the declivities and was even flooding the two ends of road which had been connected by a bridge. An old ramshackle house, which Tom thought might once have been a boathouse, stood near, the water lapping its underpinning. Close by it was a buoyed mooring float six or eight feet square, bobbing in the rushing water. One of the four air-tight barrels which supported it had caught in the mud and kept the buoyant, raft-like platform from being carried downstream in the rush of water. Holding his flashlight to his watch Tom saw that it was nearly fifteen minutes past four and he believed that about forty miles of road lay ahead of him. Slowly, silently, the first pale tint of gray in the sky behind him took on a more substantial hue, revealing the gaunt, black outlines of trees and painting the sun-dried, ragged shingles on the little house a dull silvery color.