there"s no more Germans."
"Very well. Have you searched the enemy for papers?"
"Yes, sir. We"re stuffed with note-books an" other little souveeners."
"Do your men ride?"
"Some of "em, sir, but they"ll foot it, if you don"t mind. They hate killing horses, so we turn "em loose generally. This lot should be tied up."
"What of the car?"
"Smithy will attend to that with a bomb, sir."
Bates evidently knew his business, so evidently that Dalroy did not even question him as to the true inwardness of Smithy"s attentions.
The squad cleared up their tasks with an extraordinary celerity. Smithy crawled under the automobile with the flashlight, remained there exactly thirty seconds, and reappeared.
The corporal saluted.
"We"re ready now, sir," he said. "Perhaps her ladyship will march with you behind the centre file?"
"Do you head the column?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then, for a little way, we"ll accompany you. There were three in our party, corporal. One, a Belgian named Jan Maertz, risked death to get away and bring help. I"m afraid he has been captured on the Oosterzeele road by two hussars detailed for the job. So, you see, I must try and save him."
CHAPTER XIV
THE MARNE--AND AFTER
"That"s awkward, sir," said the corporal, as the detachment moved off into the night, leaving the motor-car"s acetylene lamps still blazing merrily.
"Why "awkward"?" demanded Dalroy.
"Because, when we fellows met in a wood near Monze, we agreed that we"d stick together, and fight to a finish; but if any man strayed by accident, or got hit so badly that he couldn"t march, he took his chances, and the rest went on."
"Quite right. How does that affect the present situation?"
"Well, sir," said Bates, after a pause, "there"s you an" the lady. Our chaps are interested, if I may say it. You ought to have heard their langwidge, even in whispers, when that--well, I can"t call him anything much worse than what he was, a German officer--when he was telling you off, sir."
"What did the German officer say, sergeant?" put in Irene innocently.
"Corporal, your ladyship. Corporal Bates, of the 2nd Buffs."
"I"m sorry to have to interrupt," said Dalroy. "You must give Lady Irene a full account some other time. If you are planning to cross the Schelde to-night there is a long march before you. We part company at the lane you spoke of. I leave her ladyship in the care of you and your men with the greatest confidence. I make for Oosterzeele. If Jan Maertz is a prisoner, I must do what lies in my power to rescue him. If I fail, I"ll follow on and report at Gand in the morning."
For a little while none spoke. The other men marched in silence, a safeguard which they had made a rigid rule while piercing their way by night through an unknown country held by an enemy who would not have given quarter to any English soldier.
Bates was really a very sharp fellow. He had sense enough to know that he had said enough already. Dalroy"s use of Irene"s t.i.tle conveyed a hint of complications rather beyond the ken of one whose acquaintance with the facts was limited to an overheard conversation between strangers. Moreover, soldier that he was, the corporal realised that one of his own officers was not only deliberately risking his life in order to save that of a Belgian peasant, but felt in honour bound to do no less.
So Irene was left to tread the narrow path unaided. To her lasting credit, she neither flinched nor faltered.
"We may find it difficult to reach Gand, so I"ll wait for you in Ostend, Arthur," she said composedly.
Now, these two young people had just been s.n.a.t.c.hed from death, or worse, in a manner which, a few weeks earlier, the least critical reader of romantic fiction would have denounced as so wildly improbable that imagination boggled at it. Irene, too, had unmistakably told the man who had never uttered a word of the love that was consuming him that neither rank nor wealth could interpose any barrier between them. It was hard, almost unbearable, that they should be parted in the very hour when freedom might truly come with the dawn.
Dalroy trudged a good twenty paces before he dared trust his voice. Even then, he blurted out, not the measured agreement which his brain dictated, but a prayer from his very heart. "May G.o.d bless and guard you, dear!" was what he said, and Irene"s response was choked by a pitiful little sob.
Suddenly Dalroy, whose hearing was quickened by the training of Indian _shikar_, touched the corporal"s arm, and stood fast. Bates gave a peculiar click in his throat, and the squad halted, each man"s feet remaining in whatever position they happened to be at the moment.
"Horses coming this way," breathed Dalroy.
"Right, sir. This"ll be your two, with Jan wot"s-his-name, I hope. Leave them to us, sir.--Smithy, Macdonald, and Shiner--forward!"
Three shapes materialised close to the trio in front. The rain was still pelting down, and the trees nearly met overhead, so the road was discernible only by a strip of skyline, itself merely a less dense blackness.
"Them two Yewlans," explained the corporal, "probably bringing a prisoner. Mind you don"t hurt him."
No more explicit instructions were given or needed. Of such material were the First Hundred Thousand.
"Take her ladyship back a few yards, sir," gurgled Bates. "The horses may bolt. If they do we must stop "em before they gallop over us."
Every other consideration was banished instantly by the thrill of approaching combat. By this time, Dalroy was steeped in admiration for his escort"s methods, and he awaited developments now with keen professional curiosity. And this is what he saw, after a breathless interval. A flash in the gloom, and the vague silhouettes of two hussars on horseback. One horse reared, the other swerved. One man never spoke.
The other rapped out an oath which merged into a frantic squeal. By an odd trick of memory, Dalroy recalled old Joos"s description of the death of Busch: "He squealed like a pig."
Then came a c.o.c.kney voice, "Cheer-o, mitey! We"re friends, ammies! d.a.m.n it all, you ain"t tikin" us for Boshes, are yer?"
"_Hola!_ Jan Maertz!" shouted Dalroy.
"_Monsieur!_"
Irene laughed--yes, laughed, though two men had died before her eyes!--at the amazement conveyed by the Walloon"s gruff yelp.
"Don"t be alarmed! These are friends, British soldiers," went on Dalroy.
"I thought they were devils from h.e.l.l," was the candid answer.
Jan was unquestionably frightened. For one thing, his hands were tied behind his back, and he was being led by a halter fashioned out of a heel-rope, a plight in which the Chevalier Bayard himself might have quaked. For another, he had been plodding along at the side of one of the horses, thinking bitterly of the fair Leontine, whose buxom waist he would never squeeze again, when a beam of dazzling light revealed a crouching, nondescript being which flung itself upward in a panther-like spring, and buried a bayonet to the socket in the body of the nearest trooper. No wonder Jan was scared.
The soldiers had caught both horses. Dalroy, a cavalryman, had abandoned the earlier remounts with a twinge of regret. He thought now there was no reason why he and Irene should not ride, as the day"s tramp, not to speak of the strain of the past hour, might prove a drawback before morning.
"Can you sit a horse astride?" he asked her.
"I prefer it," she said promptly.