“I’ve been afraid we’d find that was the meaning of all the firing,” Jack answered. “The Austrians don’t dare try it in broad daylight, but hope to push enough men over to-night to hold a bridge-head, and then follow with their field artillery.”
“But what would they try to do, cross on boats, Jack?”
“If that was hammering we really heard,” came the reply, “then it means they are trying to spread a pontoon bridge across the Danube. Long before dawn they could land thousands of men with many guns on the Serbian side of the river.”
[CHAPTER XVIII]
THE SMASHING OF THE PONTOON BRIDGE
“It must be a bridge they’re building,” said Josh presently, “because just then I saw a light move along, as if held by some one who was running.”
Sounds began to reach them at the same time, which were very significant. On the whole Jack realized that there could no longer be the slightest doubt about the fact that the Austrians were pushing out a pontoon bridge with all the haste they could throw into the undertaking.
Already they seemed to be much more than half-way across the river, having, no doubt, selected a place where it was not unusually wide. And what were the Serbs doing all this while? Had they been caught napping, so that when the dawn broke the enemy would have secured a firm footing on the southern bank of the disputed river and could move the balance of his forces across at his leisure?
It looked that way, though Jack doubted it very much. From what he had read and heard of the people of the smaller kingdom he believed they were too smart not to see through the device of the enemy. He rather fancied they were in force somewhere in the darkness shrouding the southern bank, and that just when the Austrians were congratulating themselves on having met with splendid success something was scheduled to happen calculated to give the invaders a surprise.