But as none of the Dons with whom to exchange the high sign happened to be about, Billy and Henri soon wearied of the waiting assignment on the outside of carved and brass-knobbed doors. They flatly informed Salisky that this part of the contract belonged to himself and Marovitch, and if the scouts did not consent to letting their pilots go out and knock around for a while it would certainly result in two clear cases of St. Vitus dance.
“Get along with you, then,” ordered Salisky, with a grin, “but, mind what I say, you are not to leave the immediate vicinity, and must return within the next two hours. There is no telling at what o’clock we may be called upon to sail out of here.”
Talk to the winds, old scout, the boys were on the way to the open before you had turned the last period.
It was a glorious afternoon on the great Nevskoi Prospekt, the magnificent street overflowing with life.
“There’s more people out on runners here than I ever saw before in one procession,” observed Billy.
“Doesn’t look as though all the fine horses were stopping bullets on the battlefields.”
If Henri had not early gone into training as an aviator, he could easily have passed muster as a premium giver in an equine show.
“They couldn’t drive ’em like this through the streets of Boston,” further commented the U. S. A. boy. “Patrolman Maguire of the traffic squad would have a picnic on this avenue.”
Hark! What tumult this in the block beyond—this mad haste of fur-muffled reinsmen to guide toward the curb lines—these shrill cries of warning!
A pair of splendid Orloff stallions, black as Erebus, red nostrils agape, foam-flecked, raising, with the frantic pounding of their iron-shod hoofs, upshooting fountains of ice and snow particles, were running a frenzied course directly towards the spot where our boys had been viewing the unceasing sweep of sleighs.