“Dive!” he called softly.
He went in gently and Desmond followed with a splash. The sluggish water was like velvet; the tide took them gently on, while they swam madly below the surface.
Shouts ran up and down the banks. Searchlights from the blockhouses lit the river, and the water was churned under a hail of machine-gun bullets, with every guard letting off his rifle into the stream in the hope of hitting something. The bombardment lasted for five minutes, and then the officer in command gave the signal to cease fire.
“The pity is,” he observed, “that we never get the bodies; the current sees to that. But the swine will hardly float back to their England!” He shrugged his shoulders. “That being settled, suppose we return to supper?”
It might have hindered the worthy captain’s enjoyment had he been able to see a mud-bank fifty yards below the frontier, where two dripping men looked at each other, and laughed, and cried, and wrung each other’s hands, and, in general, behaved like people bereft of reason.
“Haven’t got a scratch, have you, you old blighter?” asked Jim ecstatically.
“Not one. Rotten machine-gun practice, wasn’t it? Sure you’re all right?”
“Rather! Do you realize you’re in Holland?”
“Do you realize that no beastly Hun can come up out of nowhere and take pot-shots at you?”
“It’s not their pot-shots I minded so much,” said Jim. “But to go back to a prison-camp—well, shooting would be a joke to that. Oh, by Jove, isn’t it gorgeous!” They pumped hands again.