Louisa:

The pilot was ready to leave. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Being interested numbed my fear, like ice numbing a twisted ankle, the way reading numbed grief.

He untied the fabric covering the plane’s Luftwaffe markings so he wouldn’t look suspicious when he landed back in Norway or wherever he was going. He checked the engine and wheels, he checked the hinges on the wings and tail, and he checked the propeller. I longed to know what he was looking for, where the fuel went, what the hinges on the wings did.

At last he strapped on his life jacket and parachute and pulled on a leather flying helmet.

He yelled again in English to the soldiers with the guns, repeating what he’d said before.

“Starter!”

He waved a crankshaft at them, just like you’d use to start an old car, and mimed winding it.

Ellen:

“He needs a mechanic to turn over the engine,” I told Louisa in a whisper. “Perhaps when the other lad comes near we’ll be able to run.…”

“But he’ll need both hands to drive the plane,” Louisa whispered back. “Like you do in the van, I’m sure of it. Wait till the engine starts. And then we’ll run.”

The Jerry had to wait along with us for the starter. He climbed in and sat there with his left arm slung out of the cockpit and his filthy old pistol still pointing at my head.

At least neither one of us was in the plane with him. A bonny green sprig of hope unfolded in my heart.

Louisa:

The mechanic stood on the other side of the plane to crank the engine, so we couldn’t see what he was doing. But we jolly well heard and felt when it started. The roar exploded around us like a tube train pulling into an Underground station. The German pilot pulled his arm back into the cockpit as the plane jumped forward an inch or two; the wing nearly knocked us over.

Before he slid the canopy shut over his head, Felix Baer leaned out and waved at us.

The gun was gone. I was right—he needed both hands for the plane. We were in his way now, and he was trying to shoo us off like chickens.

I waved back, to let him know I understood.

Ellen:

“Go!” Louisa cried.

She grabbed my arm and harled me along beside her. We raced away across the mowed strip of runway with the noise of the Messerschmitt howling around us. Then we were stumbling over longer, slippery grass. The Luftwaffe engine screamed like a pack of devils, and if anyone was shooting at anyone, I couldn’t hear it.

All at once that strange lassie stopped running.

She turned about to watch him go.

Louisa: