Pushing along that gallery, stumbling over blocks of fallen stone, and every once and again coming upon the bodies of fallen Brandenburgers, Henri and Jules at length reached a part where the gallery broadened out, and where the sound of combat was louder. In the distance they could see moving figures and the flash of rifles, while every few seconds there was a dull thud or a curious scuttling noise on the walls of the gallery as bullets flew by them. Then, as they drew nearer, the faint light shed by another torch showed them a number of Bretons sheltering behind an opening which led on eastward, while others lay full length on the floor, their packs in front of them to protect them. A glance into the room on the left—a store-room, no doubt, in which shells had been piled in other days—disclosed a number of wounded Frenchmen in the care of members of their ambulance corps, while, almost opposite, was another room packed with Bretons waiting to reinforce their friends when called for. Yet there was no sign of the German.
"Strange!" thought Henri. "Then where can he have gone? Surely he has not slipped from the fort elsewhere?"
"Hist! I thought I saw some fellow moving along there at the top of that flight of stairs," Jules said suddenly, pointing to the right just behind the room occupied by the Bretons in reserve, where stone steps led upward to another corridor, which itself gave entrance to another row of gun-chambers.
Darting to the foot of the stairway, Henri and Jules began to climb it cautiously and as noiselessly as possible; not that they had much to fear from noise, for, what with the shouts of the combatants and the sharp crack of rifles, rendered all the louder by the containing walls and masonry, there was little chance of their footsteps being heard. Then, too, there were the voices of those French reserves, those gallant and gay-hearted little Bretons of the 20th Corps, assembled in that room to their right, waiting till their comrades had cleared the way before them, or until a shrill whistle should call them to dash to the attack. The last peep which Henri had obtained of them had shown those very cheerful and collected individuals seated on the floor smoking heavily, chatting and laughing uproariously, as if, indeed, they were gathered miles away from the conflict, and as if fighting, and bullets, and sudden death were things of no consequence whatever.
"Hist!" Jules gripped his friend's arm again and pointed.
It was not so light in this higher gallery, and for a while it was almost impossible to make out their surroundings. But Jules had seen something, and presently Henri, too, caught a fleeting vision of a man's figure—a figure which stooped, and which crept along the farther wall, perhaps some fifty feet from them. More than that, there came a glimpse of the face of this individual on which a few scattered beams of the torches, smoking and flaring down below, happened to fall.
"Max! That German scoundrel!" he whispered to Jules. "What's he up to? Certainly not trying to make his escape. Let's close in on him."
They crept to the top of the stairs and along the gallery, their pulses fluttering not a little. For intuitively they realized that they had a struggle before them. And yet, judge of their disappointment, now that they had reached this higher gallery, for to all appearance it was empty. It was so dark up there that a man might have stood within ten paces of them and not have been discovered, while any sound he made would have been drowned quite easily. However, Henri pressed on cautiously, bent almost double, one hand against the wall to guide him, while Jules came immediately behind him, peering over his chum's shoulder. Then, when they had covered perhaps twenty feet or more, both suddenly stopped again—Henri so abruptly that Jules bumped into him.
"There!" Jules heard him say in a hoarse whisper, "There! See him! Watch him! What's he doing?"
Farther on, round an abrupt corner in the gallery, where it skirted the large room down below filled with Breton soldiers, there was a strange illumination, the source of light being uncertain. A moment or two later both those young Frenchmen following the tracks of that sinister German realized that a shaft led up from the room down below, and either the room itself borrowed its light from the gallery which in turn borrowed it from the embrasures and gun-emplacements on the farther side, or the shaft was merely for ventilation purposes. In any case, it was a wide affair, perhaps five feet square, and could the two of them have peered down it they would have discovered that it sloped steeply, and that, looking through it, they could see the happy fellows down below still smoking heavily, still chatting and joking, waiting patiently for the moment when their services would be called for.