The dark filled the little room. Presently the nurse crept in with a shaded lamp and touched Norah's shoulder.

"You could get up," she whispered.

Norah shook her head, pointing to the thin fingers curled in her palm.

"I'm all right," she murmured back.

They came and went in the room from time to time; the mother, holding her breath as she looked down at the quiet face; the nurse, with her keen, professional gaze; after a while the doctor stood for a long time behind her, not moving. Then he bent down to her.

"Sure you're all right?"

Norah nodded. Presently he crept out; and soon the nurse came and sat down near the window.

"Mrs. Hunt has gone to sleep," she whispered as she pa.s.sed.

Norah was vaguely thankful for that. But nothing was very clear to her except Geoffrey's face; neither the slow pa.s.sing of the hours nor her own cramped position that gradually became pain. Geoffrey's face, and the light breathing that grew harder and harder to bear. Fear came and knelt beside her in the stillness, and the night crept on.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE WATCH ON THE RHINE

Evening was closing upon a waste of muddy flats. Far as the eye could see there was no rise in the land; it lay level to the skyline, with here and there a glint of still water, and, further off, flat banks between which a wide river flowed sluggishly. If you cared to follow the river, you came at length to stone blockhouses, near which sentries patrolled the banks--and would probably have turned you back rudely. From the blockhouses a high fence of barbed wire, thickly criss-crossed, stretched north and south until it became a mere thread of grey stretching over the country. There was something relentless, forbidding, in that savage fence. It was the German frontier. Beyond it lay Holland, flat and peaceful. But more securely than a mountain range between the two countries, that thin grey fence barred the way.

If you turned back from the sentries and followed the muddy path along the river bank, you were scarcely likely to meet any one. The guards in the blockhouses were under strict discipline, and were not encouraged to allow friends to visit them, either from the scattered farms or from the town of Emmerich, where lights were beginning to glimmer faintly in the twilight. It was not safe for them to disregard regulations, since at any moment a patrol motor-launch might come shooting down the river, or a surprise visit be paid by a detachment from the battalion of infantry quartered, for training purposes, at Emmerich. Penalties for lax discipline were severe; the guards were supposed to live on the alert both by day and by night, and the Emmerich commandant considered that the fewer distractions permitted to the sentries, the more likely they were to make their watch a thorough one. There had been too many escapes of prisoners of war across the frontier; unpleasant remarks had been made from Berlin, and the Commandant was on his mettle. Therefore the river-bank was purposely lonely, and any stray figure on it was likely to attract attention.

A mile from the northern bank a windmill loomed dark against the horizon; a round brick building, like a big pepper-castor, with four great arms looking like crossed combs. A rough track led to it from the main road. Within, the building was divided into several floors, lit by narrow windows. The heavy sails had plied lazily during the day; now they had been secured, and two men were coming down the ladder that led from the top. On the ground floor they paused, looking discontentedly at some barrels that were ranged against the wall, loosely covered with sacking.

"Those accursed barrels are leaking again," one said, in German.

"Look!" He pointed to a dark stain spreading from below. "And Rudolf told me he had caulked them thoroughly."

"Rudolf does nothing thoroughly--do you not know that?" answered his companion scornfully. "If one stands over him--well and good; if not, then all that Master Rudolf cares for is how soon he may get back to his beerhouse. Well, they must be seen to in the morning; it is too late to begin the job to-night."

"I am in no hurry," said the first man. "If you would help me I would attend to them now. All the stuff may not be wasted."

"Himmel! I am not going to begin work again at this hour," answered the other with a laugh. "I am not like Rudolf, but I see no enjoyment in working overtime; it will be dark, as it is, before we get to Emmerich. Come on, my friend."

"You are a lazy fellow, Emil," rejoined the first man. "However, the loss is not ours, after all, and we should be paid nothing extra for doing the work to-night. Have you the key?"

"I do not forget it two nights running," returned Emil. "What luck it was that the master did not come to-day!--if he had found the mill open I should certainly have paid dearly."

"Luck for you, indeed," said his companion. They went out, shutting and locking the heavy oaken door behind them. Then they took the track that led to the main road.

The sound of their footsteps had scarcely died away when the sacking over one of the barrels became convulsed by an internal disturbance and fell to the floor; and Jim Linton's head popped up in the opening, like a Jack-in-the box.

"Come on, Desmond--they've gone at last!" he whispered.

Desmond's head came up cautiously from another barrel.

"Take care--it may be only a blind," he warned. "They may come back at any moment."

Jim's answer was to wriggle himself out of his narrow prison, slowly and painfully. He reached the floor, and stood stretching himself.

"If they come back, I'll meet them with my hands free," he said.

"Come on, old man; we're like rats in a trap if they catch us in those beastly tubs. At least, out here, we've our knives and our fists.

Come out, and get the stiffness out of your limbs."

"Well, I suppose we may as well go under fighting if we have to,"

Desmond agreed.

Jim helped him out, and they stood looking at each other. They were a sorry-looking pair. Their clothes hung in rags about them; they were barefoot and hatless, and, beyond all belief, dirty. Thin to emaciation, their gaunt limbs and hollow cheeks spoke of terrible privations; but their sunken eyes burned fiercely, and there was grim purpose in their set lips.

"Well--we're out of the small traps, but it seems to me we're caught pretty securely in a big one," Desmond said presently. "How on earth are we going to get out of this pepper-pot?"

"We'll explore," Jim said. Suddenly his eye fell on a package lying on an empty box, and he sprang towards it, tearing it open with claw-like fingers.

"Oh, by Jove--_food!_" he said.

They fell upon it ravenously; coa.r.s.e food left by one of the men, whose beer-drinking of the night before had perhaps been too heavy to leave him with much appet.i.te next day. But, coa.r.s.e as it was, it was life to the two men who devoured it.

It was nearly six weeks since the night when their tunnel had taken them into the world outside the barbed wire of their prison; six weeks during which it had seemed, in Desmond's phrase, as though they had escaped from a small trap to find themselves caught within a big one.

They had been weeks of dodging and hiding; travelling by night, trusting to map and compa.s.s and the stars; lying by day in woods, in ditches, under haystacks--in any hole or corner that should shelter them in a world that seemed full of cruel eyes looking ceaselessly for them. Backwards and forwards they had been driven; making a few miles, and then forced to retreat for many; thrown out of their course, often lost hopelessly, falling from one danger into another.

They had never known what it was to sleep peacefully; their food had been chiefly turnips, stolen from the fields, and eaten raw.

Three times they had reached the frontier; only to be seen by the guards, fired upon--a bullet had clipped Jim's ear--and forced to turn back as the only alternative to capture. What that turning-back had meant no one but the men who endured it could ever know. Each time swift pursuit had nearly discovered them; they had once saved themselves by lying for a whole day and part of a night in a pond, with only their faces above water in a clump of reeds.

They had long abandoned their original objective; the point they had aimed at on the frontier was far too strongly guarded, and after two attempts to get through, they had given it up as hopeless, and had struck towards the Rhine, in faint expectation of finding a boat, and perhaps being able to slip through the sentries. They had reached the river two nights before, but only to realize that their hope was vain; no boats were to be seen, and the frowning blockhouses barred the way relentlessly. So they had struck north, again trying to pierce the frontier; and the night before had encountered sentries--not men alone, but bloodhounds. The guards had contented themselves with firing a few volleys--the dogs had pursued them savagely. One Jim had succeeded in killing with his knife, the other, thrown off the trail for a little by a stream down which they had waded, had tracked them down, until, almost exhausted, they had dashed in through the open door of the old mill--for once careless as to any human beings who might be there.

The bloodhound had come, too, and in the mill, lit by shafts of moonlight through the narrow windows, they had turned to bay. The fight had not lasted long; they were quick and desperate, and the dog had paid the penalty of his sins--or of the sins of the human brutes who had trained him. Then they had looked for concealment, finding none in the mill--the floors were bare, except for the great barrels, half-full of a brown liquid that they could not define.

"Well, there's nothing for it," Jim had said. "There's not an inch of cover outside, and daylight will soon be here. We must empty two of these things and get inside."

"And the dog?" Desmond had asked.

"Oh, we'll pickle Ponto."

Together they had managed it, though the barrels taxed all their strength to move. The body of the bloodhound had been lowered into the brown liquid; two of the others had been gradually emptied upon the earthen floor. With the daylight they had crawled in, drawing the sacking over them, to crouch, half-stifled through the long day, trembling when a step came near, clenching their knives with a sick resolve to sell their freedom dearly. It seemed incredible that they had not been discovered; and now the package of food was the last stroke of good luck.

"Well, blessings on Emil, or Fritz, or Ludwig, or whoever he was," Jim said, eating luxuriously. "This is the best blow-out I've had since--well, there isn't any since, there never was anything so good before!"

"Never," agreed Desmond. "By George, I thought we were done when that energetic gentleman wanted to begin overhauling the casks."

"Me too," said Jim. "Emil saved us there--good luck to him!"

They finished the last tiny crumb, and stood up.