"They'd kill him if they saw his uniform!" muttered Jack. "Hark! the French are cheering! They've repulsed the charge! Grahame, do you hear?—do you hear?"
"I hear!" shouted Grahame. "These horses are crazy; I can't hold them."
The troops around them, hidden in the smoke, began to cheer frantically; the mitrailleuse whirred and rolled out its hail of death.
"Vive la France! Mort aux Prussiens!" howled the soldiers. A mounted officer, his cap on the point of his sabre, his face laid open by a lance-thrust, stood shouting, "Vive la Nation! Vive la Nation!" while a boyish bugler shook his brass bugle in the air, speechless with joy.
Grahame drove the terrified horses along the line of wagons for a few paces, then, wheeling, let them gallop straight out into the pasture on the left of the road, where a double line of trees in the distance marked the course of a parallel road.
The chaise lurched and jolted; Rickerl, unconscious still, fell in a limp heap, but Jack and Lorraine held him up and watched the horses, now galloping under slackened reins.
"There are houses there! Look!" cried Grahame. "By Jove, there's a Luxembourg gendarme, too. I—I believe we're in Luxembourg, Marche! Upon my soul, we are! See! There is a frontier post!"
He tried to stop the horses; two strange-looking soldiers, wearing glossy shakos and white-and-blue aiguillettes, began to bawl at him; a group of peasants before the cottages fled, screaming.
Grahame threw all his strength into his arms and dragged the horses to a stand-still.
"Are we in Luxembourg?" he called to the gendarmes, who ran up, gesticulating violently. "Are we? Good! Hold those horses, if you please, gentlemen. There's a wounded man here. Carry him to one of those houses. Marche, lift him, if you can. Hello! his arm is broken at the wrist. Go easy—you, I mean—Now!"