“Humph!” grunted Bob. “I hope that Buck Stewart has our breakfast ready.”
The jagged summits of the Carpathians—mountains more rugged and awe-inspiring than those of Switzerland itself—scalloped the southern horizon and seemed to overshadow the countryside for leagues, when Ned announced from the pilot-room that Przemysl was in sight.
For an hour past they had been traversing a region of wild grandeur, where broad rivers rushed tumbling and foaming down from the rocky heights, where wild sheep browsed on lonely hillsides and where the binoculars showed natives as fantastically garbed as the bandit chorus of a popular musical comedy.
They had seen whole brigades of Russians on the march, plodding sullenly along like slaves under the driver’s whip. They had seen signal fires leap flaming from hill crest to mountain crag. They had seen a flotilla of Russian barges being poled down the broad, glistening waters of the Vistula, an ugly, snub-nosed cannon on every boat. They had seen the remnants of a once natty Austrian regiment being hunted down and shot like rabbits by mounted Cossacks. All this they had seen and much more.
Away off to the west the dull rumble and muttering of heavy cannonading vibrated through the air. That was the battle of Cracow in progress, although the boys did not know it then.
Death and devastation was everywhere. Smouldering villages with unburied bodies among the embers lay in the track of each army, whether Serb, Russian or Austrian.
“Przemysl is directly ahead!” called Ned down through the speaking tube, and the Ocean Flyer began to plane slowly towards it.
The shell-battered citadel stood upon a little rise of ground with the ashes and fire-charred walls of what had been the flourishing town surrounding it. The tattered red, white and green flag of the dual empire still flapped defiantly upon the walls. All around the fortress, for miles and miles, stretched the vast encampment of the great horde of Russian besiegers.
They had dug a zigzag line of shallow trenches as close to the walls as they dared, and sharp-shooters lay flat on their stomachs in these, watching for an incautious head above the battlements. Every now and then a little puff of bluish smoke somewhere along the line showed the alertness of the marksmen.
Some distance farther back three batteries of artillery had been planted behind earthworks and these every now and then belched forth fire, shaking the ground as their shells went hurtling towards the obstinate defenders.