"Oh, yes," said Appleby dryly. "So long as we do it on board the schooner. It wouldn't be quite so nice to remember it in Siberia."
"If I couldn't talk of anything more cheerful I'd shut my mouth tight!" said Niven, who felt the chilly darkness growing curiously unpleasant.
He fancied he could have made a dash at an armed loghouse as well as the rest, but this slow crawling in on an unknown enemy was a very different and much more disconcerting affair.
Just then Jordan raised his hand, and they went on again, blundering over a boulder here and there, and now and then splashing through a little slushy snow, but still there was only sliding haze about them and in front grey obscurity, until the lads commenced to wonder whether they would go tramping on the whole night through. At last, however, they stopped again on the summit of another rise, and Appleby grasped Niven's arm when he made out the dim blink of a light in the fog. The men murmured together, and Jordan seemed to be speaking, but Appleby did not hear what he said. He could only watch the light, while Niven afterwards admitted that he could recollect very little but a feverish desire to get what they had to do over.
Once more the men wont on, a little quicker now, while the soft patter of their feet and the rattle of a rifle as one of them stumbled seemed horribly distinct in the stillness. Nobody, however, appeared to hear them, and at last when the dim outline of a house rose blackly against the night the pace grew faster, until it became a run, and the lads saw the line of shadowy figures split up left and right. Then they heard Jordan's voice.
"In with you. You know what you have to do!"
Appleby's fears seemed to fall from him, and it was with a wild desire to shout that he followed the rest at a breathless run, while Niven floundered along a few paces behind him. The house rose higher and blacker, and still nobody seemed to hear them until a dog commenced growling as they swept round to the rear of it, and stood apart on either side when Montreal with his rifle-butt beat upon the door.
There was a cry of surprise inside, a sound of voices, and footsteps that stopped again, while a deep growl made answer when Montreal once more beat upon the door. Then he stepped back and swung up his rifle.
"No time for fooling, boys," he said. "In she goes."
Appleby saw the weapon whirl high, and another shadowy man standing with the muzzle of his rifle pointed at the door. Then it came down crashing, there was a rush of feet, and he went in with the rest over the shattered door.