“Well, can you blame him for feeling that way?” burst out Buster; “when you must remember that their mother is somewhere in Belgrade, and with those shells bursting in the city they may get home only to find that they have been left orphans. I guess war is all that General Sherman said it was.”
“Oh, shucks! We haven’t seen hardly anything of its horrors yet. Wait till you read what is happening in Belgium about this time, and then it’ll be time to talk,” George told him.
“But why didn’t we hear the cannonading before?” asked Buster; “it seemed to hit us all of a sudden.”
“Because there was a shift of the wind,” explained Jack. “You know it was on our right before, and since then has changed, so that now it seems to be coming straight from the south.”
As they kept on down the river the sounds, reaching their ears every once in so often, increased gradually in volume.
Every time the suggestive sound came to their ears it could be seen that the two young Serbians would start and listen eagerly. Undoubtedly their thoughts must be centered on the home they had left in Belgrade, and they were wondering if the latest shell could have dropped anywhere near that dearly loved spot.
“Honest, now,” said Josh presently, “after that last shot I could hear a second fainter crash, which I take it may have been the shell exploding in or over the city.”
“It may have been a Serbian gun, after all,” George asserted, “and if so, then the shoe was on the other foot, and the shell burst in the fortifications on the Austrian side of the Danube, perhaps scattering guns and soldiers around as if they were so many logs.”
“That’s what our friend here is hoping deep down in his heart, you can be sure,” Jack mentioned, with a glance toward the boy passenger.