So they were actually off at last, and perhaps the whole effort took much less time than it has required to tell it. Whether the Uhlans were getting close or not could only be guessed, because the low bank of the river prevented them from seeing this fact for themselves.
Bumpus lay in the stern, just as he had fallen into the craft. Once Giraffe called out sharply to the stout comrade and asked him to “trim the boat” a little by rolling more to the right, which, of course, Bumpus only too willingly did. He was ever an obliging boy and ready to accommodate his friends on all occasions. Besides, Bumpus realized that he was having the easy end of the game, just lying there and letting the others do all the work.
Allan was in the bow and had his face turned toward the shore from which they had just started. Hence he was in a position to see all that went on there.
“Tell us when you glimpse ’em, Allan!” wheezed Giraffe between furious pushes with his pole, while Thad kept pace by rapid urgings with the oar, which he was of course using in the nature of a paddle, since it is impossible to row with only half a pair.
“Can’t see yet awhile, on account of that bank,” Allan called out; “but I seem to hear something like the pounding of horses’ hoofs, now that the shells have about stopped coming!”
Just then his attention was taken up with something else. The excited Frenchman at the caisson had changed his mind evidently. He saw that he could never empty the ammunition cart of all its contents before the coming of the cavalrymen, and apparently a new scheme had struck him.
Even as Allan glanced that way he saw the horses running down along the stream as though they had been cut free from the caisson by a sharp knife and then jabbed with the same pointed blade more or less painfully in order to cause them to dash off. And there was the driver unwinding something that looked like a thick black cord, backing away from the stranded ammunition chest at the same time.
Allan guessed what was in the wind. He did not need any one to tell him that it was a fuse the driver handled, and that he meant to lay a trap so as to blow up the caisson with its valuable contents before suffering it to fall into the hands of the enemy.
Well, that was no affair of the boys, so long as they were not struck by any fragment of the exploding ammunition depot. Allan felt a further touch of sincere admiration for the valiant French driver and then turned his attention to their own condition, which was getting rather desperate, it seemed.
Despite all that Thad could do with his paddle, supplemented by the energetic use of the push-pole in the hands of Giraffe, also working like a hero, the boat did not move along as fast as they would have liked. It was a clumsy, flat-bottom contraption and never built for speed. Water was oozing in through a number of small cracks, and while this did not threaten them with immediate disaster, at the same time every gallon that the boat took in added so much to the weight and delayed their progress a fraction of time.