In this humor then they once more started forth, feeling considerably refreshed after that fine meal. Indeed, Rod had been unable to make the little patriotic woman accept the three francs he offered her; and watching his chance he had laid the money on the table where she must later on find it.
An hour later and the throbbing had grown much more perceptible, showing that they must be rapidly drawing closer to where the vast armies were marching and countermarching, with the field batteries in almost constant action.
They understood that several German armies were approaching Paris at the same time, one coming from the north, another veering more to the east, but the most dangerous of all, that commanded by the clever Von Kluck, swinging around so as to come down on the devoted French capital from the northwest.
More than forty years had passed since another hostile army had laid siege to Paris and taken the gay city after many months of desperate fighting. Rod wondered whether history was going to be repeated now. He felt sure that if once those Germans managed to get their terrible forty-two centimetre guns busy, no fort was capable of standing up under their frightful pounding.
So the afternoon began to wear away, and all this while the motors hummed cheerily, as they worked unceasingly, carrying the three bold riders closer and closer to where the greatest battle of the age was being fought to a finish.
There was a sudden whoop from the rear, where Hanky Panky held his place. When the others managed to glance around, almost afraid that they would find him in the ditch alongside the road, with his machine a wreck, they discovered Hanky pointing wildly overhead, while at the same time he shouted:
"Looks like old times, fellows, to see that aeroplane spinning along up there half a mile high; and say, it's sure a German Taube in the bargain. How about that same, Rob; you ought to know what they look like?"
"You're right about it, Hanky Panky!" announced Rod, after he had taken a good look aloft, and recognized some of the familiar features distinguishing the Taube aeroplanes used almost exclusively at that early stage of the war by the German military forces.
"It's snooping around getting information so's to help Von Kluck strike the Allies where they don't expect him, most likely!" the boy in the rear called out.