“Oh, is that it?” she cooed, with a relieved air. How could he know then that the sabots were chafing her ankles until the pain had become well-nigh unbearable. If she could have gratified her own wishes she would have crept to the nearest hedge and flung herself down in utter weariness.
Joos, having pondered the Englishman’s views on Andenne as an unattainable refuge, scratched his head perplexedly. “I think we had better go toward Herve,” he said at last. “This is the road,” and he pointed to the left. “On the way we can branch off to a farm I know of, if it happens to be clear of soldiers.”
Any goal was preferable to none. They entered the eastward-bound road, but had not advanced twenty yards along it before the way was blocked by a mass of commissariat wagons and scores of Uhlans standing by their horses.
Two officers, heedless who heard, were wrangling loudly.
“There is nothing else for it, Herr Hauptmann,” said one. “It doesn’t matter who is actually to blame. You have taken the wrong road, and must turn back. Every yard farther in this direction puts you deeper in the mire.”
“But I was misdirected as far away as Bleyberg,” protested the other. “Some never-to-be-forgotten hound of hell told me that this was the Verviers road. Gott in himmel! and I must be there by dawn!”
Dalroy was gazing at the wagons. They seemed oddly familiar. The painted legend on the tarpaulins placed the matter beyond doubt. These were the very vehicles he had seen in the station-yard at Aix-la-Chapelle!
At this crisis Jan Maertz’s sluggish brain evolved a really clever notion. The Germans wanted a guide, and who so well qualified for the post as a carter to whom each turn and twist in every road in the province was familiar? Without consulting any one, he pushed forward. “Pardon, Herr General,” he said in his offhand way. “Give me and my friends a lift, and I’ll have you and your wagons in Verviers in three hours.”
Brutality is so engrained in the Prussian that an offer which a man of another race would have accepted civilly was treated almost as an insult by the angry leader of the convoy.
“You’ll guide me with the point of a lance close to your liver, you Belgian swine-dog,” was the ungracious answer.