“That’ll do, Andy,” cautioned Rob, who feared they were all doing more talking than discretion allowed. Who could say what hostile ears might not be within hearing distance, hidden by that semi-darkness surrounding them on every side?
They started on. Hardly had two minutes passed, fraught with untold anxiety to at least one of the party, Tubby, when Donald was heard to give a low exclamation. This time there was a note of joy and not dismay permeating the cry.
“Have you struck it, Donald?” whispered Andy, close behind the others.
“Faith, an’ I hae done that, laddie,” bubbled the Scotch-Canadian boy, so filled with delight that he could hardly refrain from shaking hands with each of his companions.
Rob saw that it was even so, for his quick and practiced eye told him the trail lay before them, as seen in the glow of the hand torch.
“We’ll have to douse the glim from now on,” he announced. “Much as I’d prefer to keep up its use, for we could go faster, it might be seen by someone, and bring us more trouble than we’d care to face.”
He shut off the light. It looked doubly gloomy to Tubby, once they had to depend wholly on the dim glow of the stars above, for bright as these heavenly bodies may appear, they afford but a poor substitute for a torch, backed by a little electric battery with its illumination focussed at one point.
“I hope we don’t lose it again,” ventured Tubby, who had sighed with relief at the luck that came their way. He had come very near saying, “I hope we don’t get lost again,” but caught himself in the nick of time.
“There is verra little danger o’ that, I assure ye,” Donald told him, as once more he started bravely forth.
Thus far Donald had managed to keep going, though Rob could not help noticing that the effort was beginning to tell upon him seriously. That limp of his cropped up more frequently than at first; indeed, if the boy took his mind off the subject for a brief space of time he was sure to fall into stumbling along. Rob hoped he would be able to hold out to the end. At the same time he had made up his mind he and Andy, and Zeb, perhaps, would finish the mission of warning the guards, even though it became necessary to leave Donald behind, with Tubby to keep him company. He had never undertaken a task that appealed more to him than this stand for neutrality. There was something strangely fascinating about it, something uplifting, that appealed to Rob strongly. He felt that he was doing his full duty as a patriotic citizen of the great United States, in thus attempting to foil the miserable and pernicious schemes of those plotters who, if only they could accomplish their plan for injuring the Allies, did not care how much they embroiled Uncle Sam with his northern neighbor and the world at war.