"We know that the French Imperial Guard have arrived, and that many new regiments have joined the English. Is an immediate attack contemplated?"
McKay was still silent.
"Ill-conditioned, obstinate fool!" cried the Prince, angrily. "It is your only chance. Speak, or prepare to die!"
"You have no right to press me thus. I refuse distinctly to betray my own side."
"Your own side! You are a Russian—it is your duty to tell us. But I will not bandy words with you. Let him be taken back to a place of safety and await my orders."
Once more McKay gave himself up for lost. When he regained the wretched casemate that was his prison he hardly hoped to leave it, except when summoned for execution.
But that day passed without incident, a second also, and a third. Still our hero found himself alive.
Had they forgotten him? Or were they too busily engaged to attend to so small a matter as sending him out of the world.
The latter seemed most probable. Another bombardment, the most incessant and terrible of any that preceded it, as McKay thought. Although hidden away, so to speak, in the bowels of the earth, he plainly heard the continuous cannonade, the roar of the round-shot, the murderous music of the shells as they sang through the air, and presently exploded with tremendous noise.
He was to have a still livelier experience of the terrible mischief caused by the ceaseless fire of his friends.