“Aachen.”
“You just pull ahead into that road there. I’ll attend to you and your oats in a minute or two.”
“But can’t I push on?”
The officer called to a soldier. “See that this fellow halts twenty yards up the road,” he said. “If he stirs then, put your bayonet through him. These Belgian swine don’t seem to understand that they are Germans now, and must obey orders.”
The officer, of course, spoke in German, the Walloon in the mixture of Flemish and Low Dutch which forms the patois of the district. But each could follow the other’s meaning, and the quaking listeners in the middle of the wagon had no difficulty at all in comprehending the gravity of this new peril.
Maertz was swearing softly to himself; they heard him address a question to the sentry when the wagon stopped again. “Why won’t your officer let us go to Visé?” he growled.
“Sheep’s-head! do as you’re told, or it will be bad for you,” was the reply.
The words were hardly out of the soldier’s mouth before a string of motor lorries, heavy vehicles with very powerful engines, thundered up from the rear. The leaders passed without difficulty, as there was plenty of room. But their broad flat tires sucked up clouds of dust, and the moon had sunk behind a wooded height. One of the hindermost transports, taking too wide a bend, crashed into the wagon. The startled horses plunged, pulled Maertz off his perch, and dragged the wagon into a deep ditch. It fell on its side, and Dalroy and his companion were thrown into a field amid a swirl of laden sacks, some of which burst.
Dalroy was unhurt, and he could only hope that the girl also had escaped injury. Ere he rose he clasped her around the neck and clapped a hand over her mouth lest she should scream. “Not a word!” he breathed into her ear. “Can you manage to crawl on all-fours straight on by the side of the hedge? Never mind thorns or nettles. It’s our only chance.”