Under Fire For Servia

"And there is another point. Austria has been making ready. She can strike quickly. Russia is slow. It will be two months before she makes herself felt, even if she declares war at once. For two months Austria can devote herself almost entirely to us. And the odds in her favor are so great that anything might happen in that time, if we had not prepared for her. As it is, there is almost nothing of Austria's plans and preparations that we do not know."

While Steve talked they were walking through what seemed almost like a tunnel. Now he flashed his light, looked about, and dropped his voice.

"Now we must begin to be careful," he said. "We are getting near the light. This is like a rabbit's warren, but soon we shall be in the open. Sure as we are that the Austrians know nothing of this place, we never take chances."

"We must be a long way from the cellar we first went into," said Dick. "Even if we've circled around, and here where there are no stars, I can't tell about that. We've walked a long distance, I should say."

"You're right," said Steve, with a low and discreet chuckle. "Oh, this is a fine tunnel! Do you know what we did a few minutes ago? We walked right under a police station!"

The tunnel seemed to dip now, and then to rise again. And in a few moments cold air was blowing on their faces; cold, that is, by comparison with the heat of the subterranean workings in which they had been buried. Then they came out, stooping, and passing through a well designed covering of shrubs and bushes, on the sandy beach of the river. Dick gasped a little at that, and at seeing that they had evidently got out of the town altogether. Before him now lay the lights of Belgrade, but he noticed one thing at once. The lights had shrunk; there were fewer than there had been the night before.

Steve had gone ahead now, scouting to see if the coast were clear, but he returned in a moment, jubilant.

"All safe!" he said. "I knew it would be, of course, but there is no need to take chances. Now we're all right so far. But we've got quite a walk before us yet. We'll still be very cautious."

"Which way?" asked Dick.

"West, along the bank of the Save here. Look, do you see that monitor there? If her searchlight swings this way, drop down. She might not pay any attention, but we don't want to be noticed at all, and it's better to be on the safe side."

"Why are there so few lights in Belgrade?" asked Dick. "I know it's late, but other nights, when I've looked over, it was much brighter."

"I'm not sure," said Steve, looking anxious. "You see, it's hours since I've had any news. The war may have come already, Dick. I hope not, because I should feel that we were more sure of getting across before the declaration. Still we have a good chance, even if it has begun."

Three times, as they walked along the river bank, Steve made a long detour inland.

"The Austrians have patrols along the river," he said. "But they don't take that sort of work very seriously. They are trusting the monitors and their searchlights. You see, their lights are swinging pretty steadily, and they cover the whole river and the Servian shore."

"And don't they think that there's likely to be danger on this side?"

"They're right, too, of course. Spies, yes. But we couldn't threaten them very seriously in any way that would make it necessary for them to be very careful here."

"I wish we knew what was going on, don't you? Doesn't it seem funny to be right in the middle of something that's going to make history and to think that people thousands of miles away really know more about it than we do?"

"Yes. But soon we'll know all there is to be known. When we're once over the river, then we can ask questions and get true answers, which is more than people in Semlin have been doing lately. Yes, I'm just as anxious for some news as you are. I rather wish now that I'd gone out while we were waiting for it to be late enough to start. But I suppose it was better that I didn't. You'd have been helpless there if anything had happened to keep me from coming back," remarked Stepan.

"If you'd been caught, you mean?"

"Ye – es, I suppose that's what I mean. Although really I don't think there was ever any great danger of that. When I got a job from Hallo, it was sure that no one suspected me, because he's so busy with government contracts that he had to be careful. I'm supposed to be a Hungarian, from Buda-Pesth. And it isn't as if I'd been trying to find out things in a general way. All I had to do was to pick up the information that it was so easy to get in Hallo's place. There were all sorts of things to be learned there, and a lot was made easy for me because Hallo and others didn't think, I suppose, that I would know what certain papers and estimates meant."

"How did you know enough to be able to do all that sort of thing, Steve?"

"Well, there were a lot of things I didn't understand, myself. But I didn't have to. I just copied down everything I saw that seemed to have anything to do with military matters in any way, and sent everything I got to the general staff at home. They knew the meaning of everything, you see. It wasn't any one thing, perhaps; it was what I and a lot of others who were at work over here were able to report that counted. They could put one thing with another, and, altogether, it was worth something. I don't know how much. But I do know, for instance, that Hallo has sent supplies of various sorts to particular places. There's a regular arsenal on the Austrian side, near Schabatz, and there are big depots of supplies at a lot of places along the Drina."