Billy, the first at the window, drew back with a sharp note of alarm.
“The fancy Cossacks!” he exclaimed.
“Quit your jollying,” cried Henri, unbelieving, bouncing out of his cot and barefooting it to the lookout point. “Jumping jimminy,” he excitedly admitted, when he saw one of the red horsemen in the act of dismounting, “you are right, sure enough.”
“But what are they doing here?” questioned Billy. “This is no stableyard.”
“Looking for us,” slyly insinuated Henri.
“Maybe there is more truth than poetry in that proposition.”
The boy from Bangor was taking the matter seriously.
In the interval several Cossacks, trailing their lances, crossed the courtyard to the main entrance of the building where the aviators were housed, and vigorously thumped for admission. These knights of the plain evidently held themselves to be privileged characters.
Billy and Henri, getting into their clothes as quickly as possible, poked their heads over the stair railing, from which location they could see and hear all that was happening in the spacious hall below.
By what they heard, however, they were not enlightened, for it was in the speech unknown to them, but enough and plenty in the sight of no other than the Cossack who had given them the evil eye in Petrograd.