CHAPTER VIII.
THE AVIATORS’ PLEDGE.
For several days, from behind the lines, the Boy Aviators had watched the Russian attack upon the heights on the north declivities of the Carpathians, in desperate endeavor to open a path to the highest ridges commanding the mountain wall.
Their own inaction on the edge of terrific combat, pouring in and out of Uzsok, Lupkow, and Dukla passes, had been nerve-racking. The roar of battle never ceased, day or night, and among all the Slav contenders swarming in the camp there were but two with whom they could commune, the familiar scouts, Salisky and Marovitch.
A welcome word then from the latter was the word “move.”
The flight of the aeroplanes from this point, where Lupkow pass pierced the Carpathians, followed the Vistula River in that part of its course which forms the boundary between Austria and Russia.
It was in the little town of Sandomir that the aviators rested after a continuous flight of 200 miles, and where the pilots met an old friend of the Przemysl time, none other than Stanislaws, in the guarded procession north of the defenders of the late Austrian fortress.
Billy and Henri did not hesitate in making a rush to greet this former comrade of the aerial profession, and eager to hear of the last days in the surrendered stronghold.
“Here you are again, Stanny,” cried the U. S. A. boy, “and, though the luck has run tough against you, we can’t help being glad of the chance to see you.”
The Austrian airman for the moment had a look askance at the green garb of the lads, indicating Russian service, but he could not long withhold hearty response to the advances of his young friends.
“I did not know you first, you gay turncoats,” he jovially quizzed, “but it’s a happy break in the gloom for me, I assure you.”
“As for that,” said Billy, touching the green sleeve of his coat, “we have simply been tossed about from one to the other of you until the Joseph we read about could scarcely have worn more colors on his back. But how did they get to you, Stanny? I thought the old fort didn’t have a hole in it.”
“There was an opening, though, my boy, and wide enough for famine and fever to crawl through. That was the combination that got to us first and there was nothing else to do but to give up. The rank and file did not know how near the rations were gone until Breckens, you remember him, was starting in his aeroplane with distress messages for Vienna. The Russians shot him down, and he fell within our line. The situation was then revealed. Well, my young friends, it is all over, and we have only one glow ahead—they have promised not to send us to Siberia.”
“But how was it that the aeroplanes could not bring in enough concentrated foodstuff to keep you ahead of hunger?”
Henri had recalled the many expeditions in which Billy and himself had participated to serve that purpose.
“An impossible task,” asserted Stanislaws. “With the rations entirely exhausted, there were one hundred and twenty thousand mouths to feed in the garrison alone, and civilian inhabitants, too, clamoring for food.”
“It must have been awful,” was Henri’s sympathetic comment.
Stanislaws passed a hand before his eyes, as if to shut out the terrible memory.
“Is there anything we can possibly do for you, Stanny?” earnestly asked Billy.
The haggard soldier in faded blue at first gave the negative by shaking his head. Then he suddenly asked:
“By any chance, do you suppose that you will visit Przemysl in your present routing?”
“I’m not sure,” replied Billy, “though it is evident that our scouts started here to get in touch with the Russian forces whose strength may be diverted elsewhere, now that the fortress has surrendered.”
“If it be so, and you are again privileged to move at will within the enclosure, there is a favor that you may safely, I believe, do for me.”
“Name it,” urged Billy.
“In the bastion at the extreme right of the west rampart of the inner fort is a loose stone, rough-faced, and marked by powder burn, cross shape. The stone can be moved with knife blade. Behind it you will find a moleskin belt, containing a decoration of great value to me and mine; a ruby-set sword hilt of far more value to a jeweler; a packet of letters, and several roleaux of gold. I would that you could accept the gold without danger, owing to its place of minting, but otherwise I pledge you to deliver this belt to the man, Fritz, at the Steiber Coffee House. Say to him, ‘It is for Eitel,’ and you will have fulfilled your promise.”
“What if there are no ‘Fritz’ and no ‘Coffee House’?”
Billy spoke like the critic of a contract.
“In that case,” wearily stated Stanislaws, “return the belt to the place I left it. In no event must you assume any further risk.”
“I don’t see why you didn’t get away in your aeroplane when you saw the jig was up. You could have done it with honor.”
Henri could not suppress his regret over this lost chance on the part of the Austrian.
“That was officially suggested to me more than once in the fort just before the storm broke,” said Stanislaws, “but the idea did not appeal to me. My duty was to sink or swim with the balance.”
It was not remarkable that the boys should be permitted to hold such lengthy converse with the prisoner, for as the companions of the noted scouts from headquarters they roved without hindrance, and, besides, had not the Muscovite troops themselves, but a short time previous, cheered the unarmed Austrians after their parade out of Przemysl?
That Salisky and Marovitch finally interrupted the interview was not a move of official interference, but due only to the emergency of their travel plan. The scouts attributed the interest taken by the lads in the trooper under guard solely to the fellowship of airmen.
“All aboard,” hailed Salisky, at sight of the young pilots; “we must be pushing on.”
“Where away?” called Billy.
“‘Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,’” quoted the scout. “But,” he instantly added, good-naturedly, “we expect to visit some new birds in an old nest.”
The inference was plain enough that the aeroplanes would be headed for the Przemysl fortress, and the direction taken by order speedily proved it.
Billy and Henri did not realize what a shake-up there had been in and about the stronghold since their leaving with Roque, until the machines they were driving hovered over the once familiar ground.
Heaps upon heaps of débris marked all that remained of the strongest of the outlying forts, which the Austrians had blown up preparatory to surrender.
Only the inner sections and the town itself, the boys observed, were intact.
Over all now the black double-headed Eagle of Russia—gone the long-resisting garrison of von Kusmanek.
Clearing the trenches and the barbed-wire entanglements, the pilots volplaned to the old landing place, where they had first met Stanislaws, the friend to whom they had just pledged their services for the only favor they could grant.
“Some changes here, pard,” remarked Billy, as they looked out and around from the rampart to which they had climbed.
“I should say,” commented Henri; “I see that all the bridges are gone, and that pontoon one leading out of the town, I suppose, was set up by the Russians immediately after the surrender.”
“Speaking of the town,” said Billy, “reminds me that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go over and see if the Coffee House is yet standing, and if Fritz is still on his pins.”
“I expect Fritz has many times tightened his belt since the picking grew thin, let alone feeding the public as he used to do.”
“Well, old top, and what of it?” laughed Billy. “Fritz could buckle up a foot or two and then would never be mistaken for a fairy.”
The Steiber Coffee house, the boys soon discovered, was no longer a center of good cheer, bright fires and sanded floors, but an improvised hospital, crowded with the sick and wounded. Fritz, however, was there as large as life, and apparently none the worse for the horse-meat diet during the weeks of want and woe in the town.
Like Stanislaws, he had an extra look at the transformed aviators before he began to thaw into former genial address, a warning process instantly and wholly completed when Billy sounded in his ear the words, “It is for Eitel.”
This friend of many travelers, credited with speaking knowledge of seven different languages, probably used a little of all of them in the greeting inspired by the magic sentence.
“The same flying boys you are that sat at my fireside with the Herr Georges” (Roque) “and the red giant” (Schneider) “on that first dark night when the great guns were roaring across the river and you came in with the wind. Ah, how different now,” sighed the heavyweight host; “the good days are no more. And,” he concluded, “what of Eitel; what word of him?”
Henri told of the trust imposed in them by Stanislaws, and of the charge that they deliver to him (Fritz) the belt and the valuables therein.
“He knows, he knows,” murmured the innkeeper, with eyes moist and a tremor in his voice, “that old Fritz will find a way to reach his loved ones at home.”
“The next thing,” asserted the practical Billy, “is to pass you the trinkets, for we never know when the call will come to pull out for another station. Keep a happy thought, old man, until we see you again.”
With these parting words the lads sauntered back toward the fort, with a studied air of careless unconcern.
All the time they were figuring on the quickest way to get to the earthwork where Stanislaws’ treasure was concealed.