"Don't let a single soul get past here until I come back again," he told them. "I'm going to see Major Nixon, who is a personal friend of mine, and my business with him is very important. We've caught a--well, a thief in the hangar, and I want him to take charge of the rascal. If you hear any row in there while I'm gone have some of your men go up to the door; but keep the gate guarded meanwhile."
The two soldiers promised that they would attend strictly to business. They knew something of what these young American boys were doing over in France, and that their presence had to do with the closing of certain arrangements with the French Government that had been under way before the breaking out of the war.
He was feeling very well satisfied with the way things were coming out. It was true there might be some cause for uneasiness in connection with the determined efforts of the spies to either steal or ruin the machine; but Frank believed he and his chums, assisted by the Allies, could keep it from being destroyed through a bomb placed under the hangar by a secret agent of the Kaiser.
One could not go very far in the neighborhood of Dunkirk in those stirring days without being visibly reminded that it was a time of war. Soldiers in detachments were moving this way or that; tents could be seen in the fields; artillery was passing along the heavy roads bound for the front, where the British army in the low country along the Yser Canal must be getting ready for that long-heralded drive that was to usher in the new policy of aggression in the early Spring.
Everywhere he looked Frank could see signs of this feverish life. How different things were across the ocean in his own beloved land; and how thankful he was that peace lay upon the great country of which he was a son.
He knew where he was likely to find Major Nixon, for he had been to see him at his quarters before now. As he walked quickly along with a springy step, Frank was laying out his plan of campaign. It was like him to prepare for possibilities, because he was determined that, as far as he could prevent it, he and his chums would not take sides in this terrible struggle for supremacy, any more than could be prevented.