"And you will allow us to go on when we choose, then?" asked Merritt eagerly.
"There is no occasion for your detention," he was informed, "but if I sought your best welfare I should order that you turn back, and give up this foolish mission, for there is hardly one chance in ten that you can escape capture at the hands of the enemy, since they are everywhere. But you know best, and I shall not interfere. It must be a serious motive that brings you into this wretched country?"
"It means a great lot to my family that I find this man, Steven Meredith," Merritt told him, possibly with a faint hope that the lieutenant might recognize the name, and admit that he knew the person.
Rob had noticed several things. For one, that the taller prisoner was certainly badly wounded, since he stood on one leg, and had his teeth tightly clinched as if to keep from betraying any weakness that might be deemed unmanly.
One of the Belgians also carried a bandage, roughly fastened, possibly by a clumsy comrade, around his arm. It showed traces of blood, and Rob could guess that a speeding bullet fired by the spies at bay probably had caused the wound.
"I notice that a couple of men here have been wounded," he ventured to say to the lieutenant, "and, as you must know, Boy Scouts are taught something of field surgery. Would you mind if I and my friend here looked at them? We might stop the flow of blood, anyway, and perhaps make the men a bit easier."
The Belgian officer hesitated for a brief time. He looked at Rob, and seemed to be considering. Then he nodded his head.
"As we have to stay here until my superior officer and a larger detachment come along in answer to the signals we are about to make, it could do no harm. Yes, I have heard that Boy Scouts are supposed to know something of surgery, although I myself have never seen them practice it. You may proceed. Albert!"
He beckoned to the private who had his arm bound up. The man upon being told to show his injury hardly knew what was about to happen. He could not believe that mere boys would know what a surgeon was supposed to do.
That man evidently had the surprise of his life when Rob, assisted by Merritt, washed the wound by the aid of some water obtained from a canteen, and then neatly bound the arm up, using some strips from a little roll of linen which Rob took from his pocket.