“Take her ladyship back a few yards, sir,” gurgled Bates. “The horses may bolt. If they do we must stop ’em before they gallop over us.”
Every other consideration was banished instantly by the thrill of approaching combat. By this time, Dalroy was steeped in admiration for his escort’s methods, and he awaited developments now with keen professional curiosity. And this is what he saw, after a breathless interval. A flash in the gloom, and the vague silhouettes of two hussars on horseback. One horse reared, the other swerved. One man never spoke. The other rapped out an oath which merged into a frantic squeal. By an odd trick of memory, Dalroy recalled old Joos’s description of the death of Busch: “He squealed like a pig.”
Then came a cockney voice, “Cheer-o, mitey! We’re friends, ammies! Damn it all, you ain’t tikin’ us for Boshes, are yer?”
“Hola! Jan Maertz!” shouted Dalroy.
“Monsieur!”
Irene laughed—yes, laughed, though two men had died before her eyes!—at the amazement conveyed by the Walloon’s gruff yelp.
“Don’t be alarmed! These are friends, British soldiers,” went on Dalroy.
“I thought they were devils from hell,” was the candid answer.
Jan was unquestionably frightened. For one thing, his hands were tied behind his back, and he was being led by a halter fashioned out of a heel-rope, a plight in which the Chevalier Bayard himself might have quaked. For another, he had been plodding along at the side of one of the horses, thinking bitterly of the fair Léontine, whose buxom waist he would never squeeze again, when a beam of dazzling light revealed a crouching, nondescript being which flung itself upward in a panther-like spring, and buried a bayonet to the socket in the body of the nearest trooper. No wonder Jan was scared.
The soldiers had caught both horses. Dalroy, a cavalryman, had abandoned the earlier remounts with a twinge of regret. He thought now there was no reason why he and Irene should not ride, as the day’s tramp, not to speak of the strain of the past hour, might prove a drawback before morning.