Part 14 (1/2)
”The last house on the left, as you go out from the farther end of the village. But anyone will show you it, in the morning.
”You don't want the light any longer?”
For the boys had, while speaking, been taking off their boots, and making a show of preparing to lie down on the straw.
”No, thank you. Good night.
”Oh, I forgot--what do you charge, a cask, for your best beer?
Father wanted to know and, if the price suits, will send down a cart to fetch it.”
The landlord named the price, and then said good night, and left them.
When he returned to the room where he had left the German soldiers, the sergeant asked him a question or two concerning the boys; and the landlord repeated the substance of the conversation which he had just had. This allayed the last suspicions which had remained in the sergeant's mind; and he congratulated himself, greatly, that he had not taken his men out, in such a night, upon a mere groundless suspicion.
”If the landlord repeats that yarn to the Germans, it will allay all suspicion,” Ralph said, when they were left alone. ”Otherwise the sergeant might have taken it into his head to come to have a look at us and, although it would not very much matter that he should discover that the birds had flown, still it would have put him on his guard, and he might have doubled the sentries, and made it much more difficult for us.
”We have had a very narrow squeak for it this time, Percy, old boy.”
”Very, Ralph! I would rather go through twenty battles, again, than feel as I felt when I saw you start, and thought that I should never see you again, alive.”
”Well, we have no time to lose now, Percy. Have you got your boots on again? If so, let us start at once. The major and men must be very anxious, long before this. It must be full an hour since we came.”
”It has been the longest hour I ever pa.s.sed, Ralph. There now, I am ready, if you are.”
”We must go out very quietly, Percy. I have no doubt that they have got sentries posted all about. They know that we are in the neighborhood I wish I knew how many there are of them.”
”I found out, from the landlord, that all the fifteen men we saw here were billeted upon him,” Percy said. ”He told me at first, when I asked him, that he could do nothing for me in the way of a bed, because there were three or four in every room. I said that a stable and a little straw would do for us, very well, and then he thought of this outhouse.
”At the same rate, there must be at least a hundred men in the village.”
They now opened the door of the outhouse, went quietly out, and made their way through a garden at the back of the house towards the wood.
”Stand still a few minutes, Percy,” Ralph said, in a whisper, ”and let us see if we can find out where the sentries are placed. I expect that they form a cordon round the village.
”Lie down by this wall. We can see them, there, and they cannot see us.”
It was well that they did so for, in another minute, they heard a tread quite close to them; and a Prussian soldier pa.s.sed, within a yard of where they were lying. They could dimly see that his hood was over his head, and hear that he was humming to himself a sc.r.a.p of some German air. They lay there until he had again pa.s.sed the spot; and then--having found out the direction of his beat--they crawled noiselessly away and, in five minutes, had reached the edge of the forest.
They did not enter it, as it would have been impossible--in the dense darkness--to have made their way without running against trees, and snapping off boughs, which would have given the alarm.
They therefore skirted the edge--knowing that, with the trees behind them, they would be invisible at the distance of a yard or two--and in ten minutes reached the place where their company was awaiting them. As they approached the spot, they gave a short, low whistle; which was the agreed sign, among the band, for knowing each other on night expeditions. It was answered at once and, in another minute, they were among their friends.
”What has happened?” Major Tempe asked. ”We were getting very anxious about you. I sent Favarts to reconnoiter, ten minutes ago; and he has just returned, saying that he can hear someone pacing backwards and forwards on the road, and that he believes it to be a sentry.”
”He was quite right,” Ralph said; ”the village is full of Germans.
There must--as far as we can see--be seventy or eighty of them, at the very lowest; and there are probably a hundred. We have been prisoners, or something very like it, and have had a monstrously close shave of it.
”But I will tell you all that, when we have time. Do you still think of carrying out your plans?”
”Certainly,” Major Tempe said, ”that schoolmaster I am determined to have, even if we fight our way in, and shoot him in bed. Have you found out where he lives?”