CHAPTER IX.
AN UNEXPECTED ORDER.
Within the fortress enclosure the boys took their bearings from memory and soon stood in the shadow of the west wall, in the location described by Stanislaws. They could see a sentry moving with measured tread on the narrow walk above them, and waited until he passed beyond the turret in the first turn of the circular parapet.
Billy led the way in setting foot on the elevation, with Henri close at his heels. In quick step they were within the angles of the bastion, and Billy took a peep along the wall to see if the sentinel had commenced his backward beat. But the guard was taking it leisurely, for no armed foe was known to be lurking without, and the duty of patrol this evening was a matter of military form.
Henri in the meantime had been casting about for the loose stone marked by the cross-shaped powder burn.
He had evidently found it, for Billy heard a whispered request for the loan of his knife.
Inserting the blade in the thin line where the mortar had crumbled, Henri dexterously twisted the stone out of its socket.
“It is here all right,” he said, holding up the belt for the inspection of his chum.
Billy, as a matter of precaution, replaced the stone and smoothed away with his foot the earth particles which had fallen with the knife chiseling.
When the guard finally approached, the belt was safely tucked away in Henri’s blouse, and both of the innocents were idly leaning over the parapet, apparently viewing the activity in the Russ encampment, across the San river.
The Slav soldier challenged the intruders in his own language, but in answer the boys simply shook their heads, indicating lack of understanding.
Looking downward, the guard hailed a number of Cossacks engaged in some lance-tilting game in the stone square.
The Dons surrounded the boys the minute they descended to the level, and failing to get satisfaction in their jerky string of questions, began to pull and haul the captives in a roughly sportive way.
The boys vigorously protested, but to no avail, and Billy even resorted to a real kick or two at savage shins. In the scuffle it so happened that the amulet which Nikita had given Henri fell out of the torn front of his blouse and under the feet of the tormentors.
The sight of the thonged lance-point had magic effect. The Cossacks ceased their badgering as one man quitting. The Don in authority had lifted a hand high above his head.
As Henri stooped to recover the flint talisman, the chief anticipated him, presenting it with a grave salutation to the bewildered lad.
It dawned then upon the aviators that they had been recognized as “brothers of the blood.”
Henri turned an “I told you so” glance at his chum. That “useful in a pinch” prediction had been verified in most opportune manner.
Salisky and Marovitch had no honor as a rescue party when they later arrived in the enclosure, completing a hurried search for their pilots, who had failed to report for the evening distribution of rations.
But the scouts could have exacted the credit of being a surprise, or, rather, surprised party when they plumped upon the seated group of Cossacks dividing the contents of their knapsacks with two youthful recruits occupying the center space at the feast.
“By my sainted ancestors,” exclaimed Salisky, “look at the lion tamers!”
He was careful, however, to say it in other than the native tongue.
“Been looking for us?” asked Billy in the most innocent way imaginable.
“No, we are just trotting about for our health,” ironically replied Marovitch.
“Better come along, however,” advised Salisky, suppressing an inclination to laugh, owing to the presence of the seriously gazing tribesmen.
“All ready,” cheerfully announced Billy, after Henri and himself had made a handshaking round of the circle.
Marching away with the scouts, it had been made up between the chums that the details of their adventure were strictly private business.
While particularly anxious to get Stanislaws’ belt to Fritz that very night, Henri concluded that the early morning would do, especially in view of the fact that Salisky had made no mention of any move immediately contemplated.
It developed, however, that the boy missed his reckoning, and proving the old saying that “delays are dangerous.” Hardly an hour of sleep, it seemed to the boys, had been granted them when the hand of Salisky dragged the pilots out of slumberland. In reality, it was cold, gray dawn which accompanied the awakening process.
“Orders to backtrack,” was the brief statement of the scout, himself already attired for flight, and with dispatch case swung over his shoulder.
“You don’t mean right away?” Henri sat up in his cot to put the question.
“Just as soon as you can get outside of some rations,” replied Salisky, “so there is no time for napping. It is a long ways to Warsaw and only two stations for food and fuel in between.”
“But you didn’t say a thing to us about it last night,” argued Henri, greatly disturbed by the prospect of failure to fulfill their pledge to Stanislaws.
“Come out of your dream, boys; it is not like you to question orders.”
The scout stood by while the boys prepared for the journey, and they were never alone again in this last hour in Przemysl.
Stanislaws’ belt weighed like a chunk of lead against the heart of Henri.
As Salisky had stated, the aviators had but two brief rest periods in the flight to Warsaw, and they traveled at lightning speed.
At the end of this air voyage, the aviation chief peremptorily ordered them off duty for at least two weeks. “No use of killing these birds,” he said to Salisky, with a chuckle, “when you have taken all the fat off their bones.”
In their old quarters that first night of their return to Warsaw from the Galician fortress, Henri looked about for a safe place to hide Stanislaws’ belt, which not only produced worry of mind but a positive irritation in the several days’ wearing. The chums lay awake long after the other aviators in the dormitory were deep in slumber, and cudgeled their brains to invent a way of shifting their new responsibility to some likely cache for the time being.
Billy happened to think of the rusty, dusty portrait of some long departed inmate of the house, hanging just outside the door which opened on the stair landing.
He transferred the thought into Henri’s ear, and the pair cautiously tiptoed across the room, taking advantage of the intermittent shafts of light sifting through the tall windows nearest the lamppost at the street corner.
“Gee whiz!” muttered Billy, halting in momentary anguish, after stubbing his toe against a chair leg.
“Ssh!” sibilantly warned Henri; “you’ll wake the dead with your clatter.”
Noiselessly drawing back the door, the boys stood under the iron-framed likeness of the early day representative of the household, Henri holding the moleskin girdle in the crook of his arm.
Billy did the squirrel act in mounting the newel post, and could easily reach behind the picture. His chum passed up the belt, and the climber hooked the brass buckle over the wooden peg from which the portrait was suspended.
“Safe enough now,” he whispered, sliding down from his perch, getting a helping arm from Henri.
Five minutes later the young aviators were sleeping the sleep of the satisfied.