"Take the bird," whispered Croquier to him, "and, whatever happens, see that the Germans do not get it. If you are about to be caught, throw the cage in the river. Its weight will sink it."
"I will," said the boy. He would have said more, as his fingers closed upon the iron ring, but his companions had slipped off into the darkness.
The few minutes of waiting that followed seemed like hours. Far, far away, there was a faint sound of cannonading, which, although the boy did not know it, was the advance-guard knocking at the gates of Namur. It rose and fell on the night breeze above the indistinguishable murmur around him, born of the presence of hundreds of thousands of men encamped on both sides of the river, of the rattle of harness, of the hum of motor-vehicles and of the tramp of feet. A dull, angry red flickered spasmodically in the sky, here and there, the reflections of burning villages below.
Silently, so silently that it seemed to Horace as though he were watching a play of shadows, two men arose from the ground behind the sentries. The blue steel in the peasant's hand flashed in the faint moonlight of an aged moon and the sentry fell with a choked cry. From the other sentry's throat there came no sound and the dumb struggle was a fearful thing to see. The hunchback's fingers, however, would have strangled an ox, and, before a minute had passed, a dead man lay on the ground, the iron grip still on his windpipe.
At that instant, Horace heard a voice humming the snatch of a German song and the third sentry came along the path, returning to his post.
The boy fingered his revolver, but he could not bring himself to shoot a man unprepared. His gorge rose at the thought. Yet, if he allowed the sentry to pass, the alarm would be given and he and his companions would be killed.
A trick of boyhood flashed through his mind.
Quickly seizing a dead branch which lay near by, he thrust it between the sentry's legs as he passed, with a sudden jerk tripping him up, so that he fell headlong from the narrow stony path into the bushes on the side. Then the boy sped for the wharf like a deer.
"The third sentry!" he gasped.
There was no time for explanations. The two fugitives and the peasant leaped into the boat and a few short, sharp strokes took them well into the strong current of the river.