The Day of Wrath Part 12

Lieutenant Karl von Halwig's comparison erred only in its sheer inadequacy. The communications officer's responsibility was great. He had failed to control his underlings. He was blind and deaf to their excesses. What matter how they treated the wretched Belgians if the road was kept clear? It was nothing to him that an old woman should be murdered and a girl outraged so long as he kept his squad intact.

"So now you know all about it, monsieur," concluded Maertz. "When I met you in the ravine I thought you were escaping, and let out at you. G.o.d be praised, you got the better of me!"

"Was the staff officer's name Von Halwig?" inquired Dalroy.

"Name of a pipe, that's it, monsieur! I heard him tell it to the other pig, but couldn't recall it."

"And when were you to meet him?"

"He had to report to some general at Argenteau, but reckoned to reach the mill about nine o'clock."

"Oh, father dear, let us all be going!" pleaded Leontine.

"One more word, and I have finished," put in Dalroy. He turned again to Maertz. "What did you mean by saying a little while ago that the frontier is closed?"

"The lieutenant--Von Halwig, is it?--sent some Uhlans to the major of a regiment guarding the line opposite Holland. He wrote a message, but I know what was in it because he told the other officer. 'They're making for the frontier,' he said, 'and if they haven't slipped through already we'll catch them now without fail. They mustn't get away this time if we have to arrest and examine every ---- Belgian in this part of the country.'"

"Ho! ho!" piped Joos, who had listened intently to Jan's recital, "why didn't you tell us that sooner, animal? What chance, then, have I and madame and Leontine of dodging the rascals?"

"_Caput!_" cried Maertz, scratching his head, "that settles it! I never thought of that!"

"Oh, look!" whispered Leontine. "They're searching the mill!"

So earnest and vital was the talk that none of the others had chanced to look down the ravine. They saw now that lights were moving in the upper rooms of the mill. Either Von Halwig had arrived before time, or some messenger had tried to find the commissariat officers, and had raised an alarm.

Joos took charge straight away, like the masterful old fellow that he was. "This locality isn't good for our health," he said. "The night is young yet, but we must leg it to a safer place before we begin planning.

Leave nothing behind. We may need all that food.--Come, Lise," and he grabbed his wife's arm, "you and I will lead the way to the Argenteau wood. The devil himself can't track me once I get there.--Trust me, monsieur, I'll pull you through. That lout, Jan Maertz, is all muscle and no brain. What Leontine sees in him I can't guess."

For the time being, Dalroy believed that the miller might prove a resourceful guide. Before deciding the course he personally would pursue it was absolutely essential that he should learn the lay of the land and weigh the probabilities of success or failure attached to such alternatives as were suggested.

"We had better go with our friends," he said to Irene. "They know the country, and I must have time for consideration before striking out a line of my own."

"I think it would be fatal to separate," she agreed. "When all is said and done, what can they hope to accomplish without your help?"

Joos's voice came to them in eager if subdued accents. He was telling his wife how accounts were squared with Busch. "I stuck him with the fork," he chortled, "and he squealed like a pig!"

CHAPTER VII

THE WOODMAN'S HUT

The miller was cunning as a fox. He argued, subtly enough, that if a man just arrived from Argenteau was the first to discover the dead Prussians, the neighbourhood of Argenteau itself might be the last to undergo close search for the "criminals" who had dared punish these demi-G.o.ds. Following a cattle-path through a series of fields, he entered a country lane about a mile from Vise. It was a narrow, deep-rutted, winding way--a shallow trench cut into the soil by many generations of pack animals and heavy carts. The long interregnum between the solid pavement of Rome and the broken rubble of Macadam covered Europe with a network of such roads. An unchecked growth of briars, brambles, and every species of prolific weed made this particular track an ideal hiding-place.

Gathering the party under the two irregular lines of pollard oaks which marked the otherwise hardly discernible hedgerows, Joos explained that, at a point nearly half-a-mile distant, the lane joined the main road which winds along the right bank of the Meuse.

"That is our only real difficulty--the crossing of the road," he said.

"It is sure to be full of Germans; but if we watch our chance we should contrive to scurry from one side to the other without being seen."

Such confidence was unquestionably cheering. Even Dalroy, though he put a somewhat sceptical question, did not really doubt that the old man was adopting what might, in the circ.u.mstances, prove the best plan.

"What happens when we do reach the other side, Monsieur Joos?" he inquired.

"Then we enter a disused quarry in the depths of a wood. The Meuse nearly surrounds the wood, and there is barely room for a tow-path between the river's edge and a steep cliff. The quarry forms the landward face, as one may say, and among the trees is a woodman's hut. I shall be surprised if we find any Germans there."

"From your description it seems to be a suitable post for a strong picket watching the river."

"No, monsieur. The slope falls away from the river, while the opposite bank is flat and open. I have been a soldier in my time, and I understand these things. It would be all right for observation purposes if these pigs hadn't seized the bridge-heads at Vise and Argenteau; but I saw their cursed Uhlans on the left bank many hours ago."

"Lead on, friend," said Dalroy simply. "When we come within a hundred metres of the main road let me do the scouting. I'll tell you when and how to advance."

"Is monsieur a soldier then?"

"Yes."

"An officer perhaps?"

"Yes."

"Ah, a thousand pardons if I presumed to lecture you. Yet I am certainly in the right about the wood."

"I have never doubted you, Monsieur Joos. Do you know what time the moon rises?"

"Late. Eleven o'clock at the earliest."

"All the better, if you are sure of the way."

"I could find it blindfolded. So could Leontine. She goes there to pick bilberries."

The homely phrase was unconsciously dramatic. From the highroad came the raucous singing of German soldiers, the falsetto of drunkards with an ear for music. In the distance heavy artillery was growling, and high explosive sh.e.l.ls were bursting with a violence that seemed to rend the sky. Over an area of many miles to the west the sharp tapping of musketry and the staccato splutter of machine guns told of hundreds of thousands of men engaged in a fierce struggle for supremacy. On every hand the horizon was red with the glare of burning houses. The thought of a village girl picking bilberries in a land so scarred by war and rapine produced an effect at once striking and fantastic. It was as though a ray of pure white light had pierced the lurid depths of a volcano.

Dalroy advised the women to take off their linen ap.r.o.ns, and Madame Joos to remove as well a coif of the same material. He unfastened and threw away the stump of the bayonet. Then they moved on in Indian file, the miller leading.

A definite quality of blackness loomed above the low-lying shroud of mist which at night in still weather always marks the course of a great river.

"The wood!" whispered Joos. "We are near the road now."

Dalroy went forward to spy out the conditions. A column of infantry was pa.s.sing. These fellows were silent, and therefore sinister. They marched like tired men, and their shuffling feet raised a cloud of dust.

An officer lighted a cigarette. "Those guzzling Prussians would empty the Meuse if it ran with wine," he growled, evidently in response to a remark from a companion.

"Our brigadier was very angry about the broken bottles in the streets of Argenteau," said the other. "Two tires were ruined before the chauffeur realised that the place was littered with gla.s.s."

These were Saxons, cleaner-minded, manlier fellows than the Prussians.

Behind them Dalroy heard the rumble of commissariat wagons. He failed utterly to understand the why and wherefore of the direction the troops were taking. According to his reckoning, they should have been going the opposite way. But that was no concern of his at the moment. He knew the Saxon by repute, and hurried back to the two men and three women crouching under a hedge, having already noted a little mound on the left of the cross-roads where cover was available. He explained what they were to do--steal forward, one by one, hide behind the mound, and dart across when a longer s.p.a.ce than usual separated one wagon from another, as the mounted escort would probably be grouped in front and in rear of the convoy.