“Thank Heaven!” he said to himself.  “I wonder if they couldn’t chase them and raid the culvert.  There aren’t so many troops there!  Then we could surely get Boris away from them.”

But the first thing to do, of course, was to come out of his cover and make himself known to his rescuers.  There was a certain risk in even that simple procedure, and Fred was not so carried away by the excitement of the fight as to forget it.  There was more than a chance that if he broke out, the Russians would mistake him for some German who had tried to escape by taking refuge in the brush, and that they would shoot without waiting to make sure.  But he had to take the chance, and he minimized the risk as much as he could by tying his white handkerchief to a stick and carrying it before him as he pushed his way into the ditch.

He waved this as he emerged.  At first no one saw him.  Then a Cossack spied him and sent his horse straight at him.  Fred leaped aside as he saw that the man meant to ride him down, and, shouting, waved his white flag.  He dodged the first assault, but the Cossack spun his pony around in little more than his own length, and waving his dangerous lance, came at him again.  He shouted again, and waved his white flag harder than ever.  That would not have saved him, however, but just as the Cossack lunged and Fred threw himself down, sure that he would either be speared or trampled by the horse, an officer dashed up and struck up the lance with his sword.

“Don’t you see the white flag?” he roared.  “We do not kill men who surrender!”

“They say that the Germans are hanging every Cossack they capture,” said the man, sullenly.

“Never mind what they say!” said the officer.  “Hello!  That man is not a soldier at all!”

“Neither soldier nor German!” cried Fred in Russian, springing up.  “Those Uhlans were chasing me!  I have just escaped from the German lines.  I did not think that I should fare as badly among my friends as among the enemy!”

“Nor shall you, friend!” said the Russian officer with a laugh.  “So you are a Russian?  Well, you look as if you might be anything!”

“I’m afraid I do,” said Fred, a bit ruefully.  He could imagine, even though he could not see himself, that the Russian was quite right.  He was caked with dirt.  In the fall from the automobile, as he had discovered while he was walking away from the wreck, he had sustained a nasty cut over the eye, which, though it was not painful, had bled a good deal.  And this had made his appearance even worse than it had been before.  His clothes were torn, too.

“Who are you, and where do you come from?” asked the Russian.

In a few words Fred told his story.  When he said that he had left Boris Suvaroff a prisoner at the culvert, with a broken leg, the officer started.

“Can’t you go after him?” Fred pleaded.  “They have very few men there.  You could sweep them away.”