The Vultures Part 47

"Oh, he is dead enough," said Kosmaroff. "I broke his neck. Did you not hear it go?"

"Yes--I heard it. But what was he doing here?"

"That is yet to be found out," was the reply, in a sharp, strained voice. "This is Cartoner's work."

"I doubt it," whispered Martin. And yet in his heart he could scarcely doubt it at that moment. Nothing was further from his recollection than the note he had given to Netty in the Saski Gardens ten hours ago.

"What does it mean?" he asked, with a sudden despair in his voice. He had always been lucky and successful.

"It means," answered the man who had never been either, "that the place is surrounded, of course. They have got the arms, and we have failed--this time. Take the horses back towards the barracks--and wait for me where the water is across the road. I will go forward on foot and make sure. If I do not return in twenty minutes it will mean that they have taken me."

As he spoke he took off his white overcoat, which was all gray and bespattered with mud, and threw it across the saddle. His working clothes were sombre and dirty. He was almost invisible in the darkness.

"Wait a moment," he said. "I will get over the wall here. Bring your horse against the wall."

Martin did so, avoiding the body of the sentry, which lay stretched across the foot-path. The wall was eighteen feet high.

"Stand in your stirrups," said Kosmaroff, "and hold one arm up rigid against the wall."

He was already standing on the broad back of the charger, steadying himself by a firm grip of Martin's collar. He climbed higher, standing on Martin's shoulders, and steadying himself against the wall.

"Are you ready? I am going to spring."

He placed the middle of his foot in Martin's up-stretched palm, gave a light spring and a scramble, and reached the summit of the wall. Martin could perceive him for a moment against the sky.

"All right," he whispered, and disappeared.

Martin had not returned many yards along the road they had come when he heard pattering steps in the mud behind him. It was Kosmaroff, breathless.

"Quick!" he whispered. "Quick!"

And he scrambled into the saddle while the horse was still moving.

He was, it must be remembered, a trained soldier. He led the way at a gallop, stooping in the saddle to secure the swinging stirrups. Martin had to use his spurs to bring his horse alongside. Shoulder to shoulder they splashed on in the darkness.

"I went right in," gasped Kosmaroff. "The arms are gone. The place is full of men. There is a sotnia drawn up in the yard itself. It is an ambuscade. We have failed--failed--this time!"

"We must stop the carts, and then ride on and disperse the men," said Martin. "We may do it. We may succeed. It is a good night for such work."

Kosmaroff gave a short, despairing laugh.

"Ah!" he said. "You are full of hope--you."

"Yes--I am full of hope--still," answered Martin. He had more to lose than his companion. But he had also less to gain.

They rode hard until they met the carts, and turned them back. So far as these were concerned, there was little danger in going away empty from the city.

Then the two hors.e.m.e.n rode on in silence. They were far out in the marsh-lands before Kosmaroff spoke.

"I am sure," he then said, "that I was seen as I climbed back over the wall. I heard a stir among the rifles. But they could not recognize me. It is just possible that I may not be suspected. For you it is different. If they knew where the arms were stored, they must also know who procured them. You will never be able to show yourself in Warsaw again."

"I may be able to make myself more dangerous elsewhere," said Martin, with a laugh.

"I do not know," went on Kosmaroff, "if they will have arrested your father and sister; but I am quite sure that they will be in the palace now awaiting your return there. We must get away to-night."

"Oh," answered Martin gayly, "it does not matter much about that. What I am thinking of are these four thousand men waiting out here in the rain.

How are we to get them to their homes in Warsaw?"

And Kosmaroff had no answer to this question.

Beneath the trees on the low, wet land inside the fortifications they found their men drawn up in a double line. There were evidences of military organization and training in their bearing and formation. If the arms had been forthcoming, these would have been dangerous soldiers; for they were desperate men, and had each in his heart a grievance to be wiped out. They were only the nucleus of a great rising, organized carefully and systematically--the brand to be thrown amid the straw.

They were to surprise and hold the two strongholds in Warsaw, while the whole country was set in a blaze, while the foreign powers and the parties to the treaty which Russia had systematically broken were appealed to and urged to a.s.sist. It was a wild scheme, but not half so wild as many that have succeeded.

The four thousand heroically waiting the word that was to send them on their forlorn hope heard the news in silence, and all silently moved away.

"It is for another time--it is for another time!" said Kosmaroff and Martin repeatedly and confidently, as the men moved past them in the darkness.

In Warsaw there was a queer silence, and every door was shut. The streets had been quite deserted, and they were now full of soldiers, who, at a given word, had moved out from the barracks to line the streets.

At midnight they were still at their posts, when the first stragglers came in from the south, silent, mud-bespattered, bedraggled men, who shuffled along in their dripping clothes in the middle of the street in groups of two and three. They hung their heads and crept to their houses. And the conquerors watched them without sympathy, without anger.

It was a miserable fiasco.

x.x.xV

ACROSS THE FRONTIER

Those who listened at their open windows that night for the sound of firing heard it not. They heard, perhaps, the tread of slipshod feet hurrying homeward. They could scarcely fail to hear the Vistula grinding and grumbling in its new-found strength. For the ice was moving and the water rising. The long sleep of winter was over, and down the great length of the river that touches three empires men must needs be on the alert night and day.

Between the piers of the bridge the ice had become blocked, and the large, flat floes sweeping down on the current were pus.h.i.+ng, hustling, and climbing on each other with grunts and squeaks as if they had been endowed with some low form of animal life. The rain did not cease at midnight, but the clouds lifted a little, and the night was less dark.

The moon above the clouds was almost full.

"There is only one chance of escape," Kosmaroff had said--"the river.

Meet me on the steps at the bottom of the Bednarska at half-past twelve.

I will get a boat. Have you money?"

"I have a few roubles--I never had many," answered Martin.

"Get more if you can--get some food if you can--a bottle of vodka may make the difference between life and death. Keep your coat."

And they parted hurriedly on the hill where the road rises towards the Mokotow. Kosmaroff turned to the right and went to the river, where he earned his daily bread, where his friends eked out their toilsome lives.

Martin joined the silent, detached groups hurrying towards the city.

He pa.s.sed down the whole length of the Marszalkowska with the others slouching along the middle of the street beneath the gaze of the soldiers, brus.h.i.+ng past the horses of the Cossacks stationed at the street corners. And he was allowed to pa.s.s, unrecognized.

A group of officers stood in the wide road opposite to the railway station, m.u.f.fled in their large cloaks. They were talking together in a low voice. One of them gave a laugh as Martin pa.s.sed. He recognized the voice as that of a friend--a young Cossack officer who had lunched with him two days earlier.