“What we’re going to do: both of us going straight to face the lion and put our heads into his mouth.”
“You mean my father?”
“Of course.”
“Nonsense! He will have no time to think of punishing us.”
“Won’t he?” growled Serge. “Trust the master for ever forgetting anything. We shall have it, and sharply too, after him and Julius have come and done what they’ve got to do in the way they know how.”
“Pst! Don’t talk,” whispered Marcus. “Look, this officer is giving his orders to the leaders of the chariots, and here he comes to us.”
The boy was right, for a few minutes later the officer came quickly to him, and his words were very short.
“You have your orders from the chief, young man?” he said. “Stand fast there among these rocks till the line of chariots has moved off, and then go down to the lower camp where the foot soldiers are as soon as they have changed their station.”
He turned away directly, and as their driver sprang up, quite on the alert as he saw that something was on the way, Marcus went to one pony, Serge to the other, to see that every portion of the harness was in proper trim; and Lupe leaped out of the chariot and then back to the front, to raise himself upon his hind legs and plant his paws on the front as if he were in command and issuing his orders, which took the form of a deep bay.
Directly after a sub-officer, who was in command of the line, gave an order, each chariot was manned, and following one another in file they began rattling and bumping in and out amongst the rocks and hollows, slowly and noisily in the direction of the highest point of the pass from which the way had been fought so short a time before.