The Belgians to the Front Part 17

"I thought I might find that," he said. "I've shot a bolt on the door.

That will hold anyone who tries to come down for a few moments at least, and it will give us time to get out the way we came. We may wish to escape, you see."

"Good!" said Paul. "All right! Now let's try to find those guns."

But of guns or weapons of any sort they could find no trace. They looked behind all the barrels and casks and under every possible hiding place. They lifted some of the barrels, though to do so was a considerable task, and the result was the same.

"Perhaps they have chosen some other hiding place or else the woman did not really know, and only suspected," suggested Arthur.

But that explanation did not satisfy Paul. And in a moment he had an inspiration. At once he began trying to tip back the great hogsheads at one side of the vault. The third yielded easily, and he immediately pried off its top.

"Aha, here we are!" he said. "Look, Arthur! I noticed that some of these were empty, but I thought anything like a gun would rattle around inside. But do you see what they did? They have the guns here, but they're packed in with rags and sacking, so they can't move and make a noise."

"That was clever!" said Arthur. "I suppose they expected the Germans to make a search."

He drew out a gun, a shotgun with a sawed off barrel. The shortening of the barrel served a double purpose. It made it possible for the gun to be hidden in the barrel, and it made of it, also, at close range, a far more dangerous and formidable weapon than it had been in its original form.

"What are we to do with them? Where shall we hide them?"

"Nowhere. We shall put them back," said Paul. "When we have finished with them, that is. Here, let me show you!"

He took the sawed off shotgun, opened the breech, and in a moment had hopelessly shattered the firing mechanism.

"There, do you see? They'll find their guns--but they'll have trouble in firing them! That's better than taking them away, because it's so much safer."

"Oh, I should say so!"

They were busy for five minutes getting out the guns, of which there were only a dozen all told, breaking them and then putting them back.

They left the place as they found it, and the guns themselves, moreover, would not immediately give up the secret of how they had been treated.

"I wonder if we can't find the ammunition?" said Paul, when they had finished their work with the guns. "Then we could really finish the job."

But the search for that proved vain. Though they looked everywhere they came upon no hidden store of bullets or powder. Nor had Paul really hoped that they would.

"They'd carry that with them, naturally," he said. "Well, it doesn't make much difference. We--"

On the word there was a noise outside. They stopped, listening. Down the steps by which they had entered came footsteps, and they first saw heavy boots and then a pair of stout legs come into the range of the lantern. For a moment they were rooted to the spot, and in that moment the rest of the descending figure came into view, and they saw that it was Raymond. In the same moment he saw them, and cried out sharply, fear and anger mingled in his voice. That ended the spell that had held them still. Arthur started a rush toward the newcomer, but Paul caught his arm.

"No! Upstairs!" he cried.

As he spoke, he seized the lantern from the hook where it hung, and swung it around, extinguishing the feeble flame at once. And then, as Raymond with a roar of rage started toward them, he flung the lantern straight at him. A cry of pain told him that his aim had been true, even in the darkness, and then he leaped up the stairs after Arthur, who was already fumbling at the bolt. In a moment they were through the door and had burst into the midst of the astonished soldiers in the taproom above.

For just a moment their sudden appearance caused excitement and confusion among the soldiers, who must have imagined that this was a surprise attack. But then some of the men, who had seen them talking with Major Kellner earlier in the day, recognized them and a shout of laughter went up.

"It is only those boys!" cried one soldier. "Here, you young ones, you must stay to supper, now that you have come!"

He seized Paul and forced him into a chair, while another did as much for Arthur.

"Come, landlord, your best for our guests!" cried half a dozen of the soldiers.

Marcel, the landlord, who evidently knew only too well what his cellar contained beside wine and beer, was staring at them with a white, panic-stricken gaze. But he turned to obey, none the less; he was in deadly fear, it was plain, of the boyish soldiers. They might be willing to jest now, but he knew that they were the same men who fought like devils, and if reports were true (which they were not!) cut off the hands of women and children.

He brought food, and one of the soldiers handed Paul a gla.s.s of wine.

"Now, then!" cried the German. "You shall drink a toast to the good Kaiser Wilhelm, who is now King of Belgium as well as of Prussia, and who will eat the first course of his Christmas dinner in Paris and fly to London in a Zeppelin for the second! Skoal!"

"Ja! Ja wohl! A toast to the Kaiser by the young Belgian!" cried some of the others.

Paul got up, the gla.s.s held firmly in his hand. His cheeks were blazing.

"I will give you a toast!" he cried. "To Kaiser Wilhelm! May he eat his Christmas dinner in Saint Helena, with the ghost of Napoleon to keep him company! And may King Albert and King George and the Czar and the president of France enjoy a dinner that shall be served to them in the palace of Potsdam!"

And then he flung down the gla.s.s, so that it was shattered on the stone floor, and the red wine ran over the white flags.

"And so say I and every other good Belgian!" echoed Arthur.

For a moment there was a stunned silence in the room. The German soldiers, aghast at such daring, stared with open mouths and wide eyes.

And then there was an angry murmur, spreading from one man to another, as the enormity of Paul's daring sank in.

"He has insulted the Kaiser! He has dared to be disrespectful toward our Emperor! He has refused to drink to his health!"

"Do what you like!" cried Paul, thoroughly aroused now, as Arthur had seen him roused only once or twice before, and utterly indifferent to what might happen to him. "I am not afraid of you! Come, stop us if you like!"

And then while the angry muttering continued, and each of the German soldiers seemed to wait for one of the others to make the first move, Paul and Arthur, side by side, without looking to right or left, walked out of the place and into the open air of the single street of Hannay.

For a moment, after they pa.s.sed outside, they heard nothing, though they had expected to be pursued and brought back. And then suddenly from behind them there came the last sound they could have expected or hoped to hear--a tremendous roar of laughter! Paul's courage in defying them had won the admiration of the German soldiers at last.

Brave men are nearly always ready to pay a tribute to bravery in others.

But if they had escaped from one danger, they had still to face another and one that might be even greater, as they well knew. For Raymond, the butcher, had seen them in the cellar. No doubt he knew by this time what had happened to his guns, and he would certainly know who was to blame for their condition. He would be more certain than ever that they were traitors to Belgium, since he was too stupid to understand how well the scouts had served him, and it was sure that he and his cronies of the civic guard would make some attempt to secure revenge.

Indeed, even as they came into the street, Paul saw a lurking figure across the way, that moved as they did.

"Don't look around," he whispered to Arthur. "But I think that Raymond is watching us from the other side of the street. We must be careful."

And then, suddenly, without the slightest warning, a whistling sound that both scouts knew well after their experience during the sh.e.l.ling of the German battery near their old home, was heard overhead. It was followed in a few seconds by a terrific explosion. But fortunately the explosion was at some distance. The sh.e.l.l, for it was a sh.e.l.l that they had heard, burst outside of the village and did no damage.

But it created a tremendous effect, none the less. At once the German officers came running from the doctor's house where they were quartered, and, as more sh.e.l.ls burst nearby, bugles sounded, and the German soldiers came running to the centre of the village, gathering rapidly from the houses where they had been enjoying their brief respite from war. Sentries and all were called in, and within three minutes the troops were off, at the double quick, going in the direction whence they had come to enter the village of Hannay.

And now the comparative silence of the night, that had been broken before then only by the dull and intermittent thunder of the guns around Liege, was shattered in a thousand ways. Heavy firing by infantry rifles, as well as by field guns, came from the north. It was plain that Belgian or French troops must have been advancing with great rapidity to interfere with the German raid on the country between Liege and Brussels. Flashes of fire marked the bursting sh.e.l.ls less than a mile away, and occasional spurts of flame showed where the German guns were replying to the sudden attack. In a moment Hannay was deserted by the Germans. And before the villagers, led by Raymond, had collected their scattered wits, Paul had seen the chance of escape.

"Come on!" he cried, to Arthur.

They ran as fast as they could after the Germans.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BATTLE