This misfortune marked the end, Dalroy thought. But there was a chance of escape, if only for the few remaining hours of the night, and he took it with the same high courage he displayed in going back to the rescue of Irene Beresford in the railway station at Aix. He had a rifle with five rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. At the worst, he might be able to add another couple of casualties to the formidable total already piled up during the German advance on Liège.
The sabots offered a serious handicap to rapid and silent movement, but he dared not dispense with them, and made shift to follow Schwartz and the others as quietly as might be. He was helped, of course, by the din of the guns and the rustling of the leaves; but there was an open space in the narrow road before it merged in the wood which he could not cross until the Germans were among the trees, and precisely in that locality Schwartz halted his men to explain his project. Try as he might, Dalroy, crouched behind a pollard oak, could not overhear the spy's words. But he smiled when the party went on in Indian file, Schwartz leading, because the enemy was acting just as he hoped the enemy would act.
He did not press close on their heels now, but remained deliberately at the foot of the hill and on the edge of the quarry. Standing erect, with the rifle at the ready, he waited. He could hear nothing, but judged time and distance by counting fifty slow steps. He was right to a fifth of a second. A shot rang out, and was followed instantly by a yell of agony. He saw the flash, and, taking aim somewhat below it, fired six rounds rapidly. A fusillade broke out in the wood, the Germans, like himself, firing at the one flash above and the six beneath. A bullet cut through his blouse on the left shoulder and scorched his skin; but when the magazine was empty he ran straight on for a few yards, turned to the right, stepping with great caution, and threw himself flat behind a rock. As he ran, he had refilled the magazine, but now meant using the rifle as a last resource only.
In effect, matters had fallen out exactly as he calculated. Schwartz had blundered into the man-trap set on the path half-way up the cliff, and was shot. The others, lacking a leader, and stupefied by the firing and the darkness, bolted like so many rabbits to the open road and the moonlight as soon as the seeming attack from the rear ceased.