“Oh, it was mended to suit our engineers, that is all,” answered the first speaker, and chuckled louder than ever.
“Did they set a trap for the dirty sons of Nippon?”
“That they did,” put in a third speaker. “A fine trap, too.”
“Tell me what it was, Groski.”
“So you may tell the enemy, eh?”
“Do you take me for a traitor?”
“No, I was but fooling. They placed some dynamite under the bridge and connected it in some way with the planking. As soon as a heavy weight like a gun or a body of soldiers gets on the bridge something will go off, and the gun or the soldiers will go up, sky-high!” And the speaker laughed loudly, his companions joining in.
“Dynamite does not blow up, it blows down,” said one, after the laughter had come to an end.
“True for you, Shelapovsky; but there was powder there as well as dynamite. You can trust our engineers to fix a trap properly.”
“They left a big hole on the An-Ping road,” put in another of the artillerymen. “It was on this side of the river. It was covered with loose hay and had pointed sticks at the bottom. I trust the enemy’s artillery or soldiers get into that. They’ll have a fine tumble!” And then the Russians laughed again.