“But they’ve located the different spots where that hot fire came from, and are hoping to get a few of the enemy guns with their big shells,” continued Josh, who could always be depended on to do the explaining when he grasped a subject himself.
“Well, then, I do hope they won’t drop a shell over this way and give us a bad scare,” said Buster.
“That’s a fact; that gun by which the bridge was cut to pieces did get in its work from near by here!” added George uneasily.
“I heard men talking and horses whinnying between the bursts of firing,” said Jack; “so I reckon they cleared out just as soon as their work was done. That’s the case, too, all along the line, the batteries and their supporting columns falling back to new positions so as to avoid the bombardment they know mighty well is going to come.”
Sitting there in the boat, they watched the fitful flashes of fire on the ridge far back from the river. It was much more thrilling than any storm they had ever seen; and then would come the crash as each enormous shell exploded on the southern side of the hotly contested stream that served as the border between the hostile countries.
Once there was a frightful detonation not far away from where the boys huddled aboard the little motorboat. The Austrian gunners had commenced to send missiles toward the spot from which the Serb gun had barked. Doubtless a terrible hole had been knocked in the bluff, a cavity that looked like a crater resulting from the explosion.
Every one of them had felt the shock attending the bursting of the high explosive shell, though luckily none of the fragments chanced to scatter in their direction.
“Oh! that was an awful crack!” groaned Buster, as though his heart might have tried to jump into his throat and partly choke him. “I do hope they won’t give us an encore. A hundred feet further this way and our name would have been Dennis.”
“Huh!” grumbled George, “better say it would be Mud, because we’d have gone into the river with tons of the earth here.”
“Listen! The Serbs are replying now!” said Jack.