They struck hands then.
"We must wait until dark," said Stepan. "Until it is really dark, full night. Then it will be very easy to get over the river, unless things have changed greatly since last night. I am glad you are going to stay, Dick. We are in the right, and we are going to win. There's no other way."
"I think so, too," said Dick. "Steve, there's just one thing. I know that Austria has treated Servia badly, and that she should not have annexed lands in which there were so many Serbs. But that murder in Serajevo was an awful thing—"
"It was frightful!" declared Stepan, passionately. "Every true Servian will tell you the same thing! But it is a wicked Austrian lie to say that Servia had anything to do with it! It was Austrian subjects who were, perhaps, Serbs in blood, who planned it. We Servians did all we could. Our government learned that trouble was brewing, and our minister in Vienna begged the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to stay away or at least to take especial precautions. The Serbs in Bosnia hated him because they thought he was the man who planned the annexation. But to say that the Servian government knew what was planned is to say what the Austrian government knows to be false.
"No, that is only an excuse. Austria is afraid of us, of our patriotism. She has determined to crush us before we are too strong. She is trembling because of her memory of how we crushed the Turks."
CHAPTER V
UNDER FIRE
It was after midnight when Steve finally decided that it was safe to venture from their retreat. And then they did not emerge by the way in which they had entered it.
"This place has saved the life of many a Servian patriot in these last few years," said Steve. "I think the Austrians have come near to finding it once or twice. They have pursued some of our people to the very entrance. But what has always puzzled them is that we never go out by the way in which we come in. And one entrance we have never used except for flight, and then only in a grave emergency. No Austrian pursuer has ever seen that, or come near it. It is the one by which we shall escape now. Keep still. That is all that is necessary. Keep still and follow me."