Fenton grasped Crane's hand warmly.
"Phil, it is worth trying," he said. "If it succeeds, the credit for deciding the final outcome of the Great War may belong to you. I wish I could go with you."
"When Mr Crane returns I shall tell him how wonderful it is I think him to be," said Anna, shaking his hand in turn.
"I'm coming back right enough," replied Crane, with a steady regard, and retaining her hand the while. "And when I do, I shall have something myself to say to you."
Half an hour later, warmly cloaked, and booted and spurred, Crane rode down the mountain-side toward the Bhura River. Looking back he could see a beacon light burning brightly on one of the highest peaks, and he knew that Larescu was gathering his band for the night's work.
CHAPTER XXI
PLANNING A FUTURE
As the hours passed the hill country awoke to restless activity. On several prominent peaks the beacon fires blazed, summoning the followers of Take Larescu. From all sides they began to troop in, silent, grotesque, armed to the teeth. The glen, along the ridge of which Fenton had carried his bride earlier that night, was soon crowded with the hill men. By midnight more than a thousand had assembled, and from all directions they were still coming at the urgent summons of the flaring beacons.
Take Larescu took charge of the situation and skilfully wrought order out of chaos. He organised his followers into detachments, and to each allotted positions along the stretch of foot-hills where the Austrians would be awaited. On receiving their instructions from the gigantic master of ceremonies, the detachments moved off into the enshrouding darkness as silently as they had come. The oddly garbed figures coming and going in the flickering light of torches, the war-like gestures, made the whole proceedings seem a phantasm of the imagination, a wild, strange dream.
Fenton, wearing the military cloak of Miridoff, watched proceedings from a vantage point in the rear. He had early found that Take Larescu was master of the situation, and had discreetly withdrawn into the background. Larescu had fought through several campaigns, and had gained a reputation as the Napoleon of mountain warfare. He could be counted upon to give the Austrians a warm reception.