"I've an idea the road turns north about a mile down," Tom said to himself, "and runs around through----" The words stopped upon his lips as _Uncle Sam_, still laboring upward, reached level ground, and as if to answer Tom out of his own uncomplaining and stouter courage, showed him a sight which sent his faltering hope skyward and started his heart bounding. For there below them lay the vast and endless background of the sea, throwing every intervening detail of the landscape into insignificance. There it was, steel blue in the brightening sunlight and glimmering here and there in changing white, where perhaps some treacherous rock or bar lay just submerged. And upon it, looking infinitesimal in the limitless expanse, was something solid with a column of black smoke rising and winding away from it and dissolving in the clear, morning air. "There you are!" said Tom, patting _Uncle Sam_ patronizingly in a swift change of mood. "See there? That's the Atlantic Ocean--that is. _Now_ will you hurry? That's a ship coming in--see? I bet it's a whopper, too. Do you know what--what's off beyond there?" he fairly panted in his excitement; "do you? You old French hobo, you? _America!_ That's where _I_ came from. _Now_ will you hurry? That's Dieppe, where the white[2] is and those steeples, see? And way across there on the other side is America!" For _Uncle Sam_, notwithstanding his name, was a French motorcycle and had never seen America. [2] Dieppe's famous beach. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX A SURPRISE Down the hill coasted _Uncle Sam_, bearing his rider furiously onward. A fence along the wayside seemed like a very entanglement of stakes and pickets. Then it was gone. A house loomed up in view, grew larger, and was gone. A cow that was grazing in a field languidly raised her head, blinked her eyes, and stood as if uncertain whether she had really seen something pass or not. They were in the valley now and the sea was no longer discernible. On they rushed with a fine disdain for poor little Charos, whose village steeple appeared and disappeared like a flash of lightning. The road was broad and level and _Uncle Sam_ sped along amid a cloud of dust, the bordering trees and houses flying away behind like dried leaves in a hurricane. The rider's hair was fluttering like a victorious emblem, his eyes fixed with a wild intensity. "We'd get arrested for this in America," he muttered; "we--we should worry." It was little _Uncle Sam_ cared for the traffic laws of America. Around the outskirts of Teurley they swept and into the broad highway like a pair of demons, and a muleteer, seeing discretion to be the better part of valor, drove his team well to the side--far enough, even, to escape any devilish contamination which this unearthly apparition might diffuse.