Trust a carter to carry string, strong stuff warranted to mend temporarily a broken strap. Maertz gave him a quantity.
“I am going to the cross-road,” he continued. “Keep a close watch till I return. When you hear any movement, or see any one, say clearly ‘Visé.’ If it is I, I shall answer ‘Liège.’ Do you understand?”
“Perfectly, monsieur. A challenge and a countersign.”
Dalroy believed the man might be trusted now. Taking the rifle, he made off along the path, treading as softly as the cumbrous sabots would permit. He was tempted to go bare-footed, but dreaded the lameness which might result from a thorn or a sharp rock. At a suitable place, half-way down the steep path by the side of the quarry, he tied a pistol to a stout sapling, and, having fastened a cord to the trigger, arranged it in such fashion that it must catch the feet of any one coming that way. The weapon was at full cock, and in all likelihood the unwary passer-by would get a bullet in his body.
It was dark under the trees, of course, but the moon was momentarily increasing its light, and the way was not hard to find. He memorised each awkward turn and twist in case he had to retreat in a hurry. Once the lower level was reached there was no difficulty, and, with due precautions, he gained the shelter of a hedge close to the main road.
The stream of troops still continued. Few things could be more ominous than this unending torrent of armed men. By how many similar roads, he wondered, was Germany pouring her legions into tiny Belgium? Was she forcing the French frontier in the same remorseless way? And what of Russia? When he left Berlin the talk was only of marching against the two great allies. If Germany could spare such a host of horse, foot, and artillery for the overrunning of Belgium, while moving the enormous forces needed on both flanks, what millions of men she must have placed under arms long before the mobilisation order was announced publicly! And what was England doing and saying? England! the home of liberty and a free press, where demagogues spouted platitudes about the “curse of militarism,” and encouraged that very monster by leaving the richest country in the world open to just such a sudden and merciless attack as Belgium was undergoing before his eyes!
Lying there among the undergrowth, listening to the tramp of an army corps, and watching the flicker of countless rifle-barrels in the moonlight, he forgot his own plight, and thought only of the unpreparedness of Britain. He was a soldier by training and inclination. He harboured no delusions. Man for man, the alert, intelligent, and chivalrous British army was far superior to the cannon-fodder of the German machine. But of what avail was the hundred thousand Britain could put in the field in the west of Europe against the four millions of Germany? Here was no combat of a David and a Goliath, but of one man against forty. Naturally, France and Russia came into the picture, yet he feared that France would break at the outset of the campaign, while Austria might hold Russia in check long enough to enable Germany to work her murderous design. Be it remembered, he could not possibly estimate the fine and fierce valour of the resistance offered by Belgium. It seemed to him that the Teuton hordes must already be hacking their way to the coast, leaving sufficient men and guns to contain the Belgian fortresses, and halting only when the white cliffs of England were visible across the Channel.
If his anxious thoughts wandered, however, and a gnawing doubt ate into his soul lest the British fleet might, as the Germans in Visé claimed, have been taken at a disadvantage, he did not allow his eyes and ears to neglect the duties of the hour.
A fall in the temperature had condensed the river mist, and the air near the ground was much clearer now than at eight o’clock. The breeze, too, gathered the dust into wraiths and scurrying wisps through which glimpses of the sloping uplands toward Aix were obtainable. During one of these unhampered moments he caught sight of something so weird and uncanny that he was positively startled.
A sorrow-laden, waxen-hued face seemed to peer at him for an instant, and then vanish. But there could be no face so high in the air, twenty feet or more above the heads of a Prussian regiment bawling “Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles.” The land was level thereabouts. The apparition, consequently, must be a mere trick of the imagination. Yet he saw, or fancied he saw, that same spectral face twice again at intervals of a few seconds, and was vexed with himself for allowing his bemused senses to yield to some supernatural influence. Then the vision came a fourth time, and a thrill ran through every fibre in his body.