CHAPTER VIII
The Verdun Salient
It was three nights after that on which Henri and his friends had reached Louvain—that deserted city wrecked by German violence—and had so fortunately and so literally hit up against a Belgian patriot, that four figures crept from a tenement which had escaped the general wreckage.
"You will walk along beside me, my friends, as though we were just inmates of the city," said the Belgian, just before they left the house in which he had given the three fugitives a resting-place. "If we pass German soldiers, take your hats off to them, and if they challenge, leave me to answer. Now let us be going, and I think that we may hope for success."
Those four figures, Henri and his friends, now dressed in rough civilian clothing, crept off along the deserted streets, and, threading their way through the outskirts of the ruined city, and passing on occasion groups of German soldiers whom they obsequiously saluted, at length reached the open country. Tramping on through the night, they sheltered, just before the dawn broke, in a ruined house in another city, and repeated a similar process on the following morning. It was on the third night that the Belgian led them into what had once been a peaceful country village, and which was now merely a mass of tumbled masonry.
"We are close to the Dutch frontier, my friends," he told them, "but the way there is not so easy as it might seem, for the Germans have stretched a barbed-wire fence between Belgium and Holland, and on it is suspended an electric wire, charged with a high voltage, which kills instantly; many a poor fellow endeavouring to escape from this unhappy country has been electrocuted. But there are ways to avoid such dangers, and here is one. Give a help, you, my friend Stuart, who are the Hercules of the party."
A huge grating, which he endeavoured to lift, was a mere plaything in the hands of the burly Englishman. It was a big grating above an open sewer, and heavy enough to try the strength even of Stuart, yet it yielded to the first tug he gave, and lifted upwards.
"Now, descend," said the Belgian, "there is a pit down here some twenty feet in depth, and iron rungs in the wall. Descend, my friends; I follow."
In a trice they were at the bottom of what felt like a deep, cold well, and were standing in utter darkness listening to the sounds made by the Belgian as he too entered and dropped the grid behind him. Then all four stood listening for a while.