"We needn't wriggle under the wire, this road on our right evidently leads to the fort. We'll get a bit closer; but hold on a minute, we'll see if that gun pops up again."
They waited for at least five minutes, but without the expected result. As they turned to retrace their steps, they were confronted by a tall Belgian soldier wearing the blue uniform of the artillery.
"C'est défendu: marchez!" he ordered sternly.
"All right, monsieur," replied Kenneth. "We've lost our way. Which is the Liége road?"
"You are foreigners," exclaimed the soldier, bringing his bayonet to the "ready".
"No matter. They will be attended to. Forward!"
Realizing the uselessness of attempting to argue the point the lads obeyed, the soldier following three paces in the rear with his rifle and bayonet at the slope.
After covering a distance of about a hundred yards between the edge of the barbed-wire entanglements and the dip formed by the sunken road, the arrested lads found themselves in the presence of a corporal and a file of men.
"You must be taken before the major. I am sorry, but these are my orders," declared the corporal civilly, after ascertaining that the two chums were English. "No doubt you will be permitted to go with but little delay."
"Will our motor-bicycles be all right?" asked Rollo anxiously. "We left them a little way down the lane."
"I will send a man to look after them," was the reply. "We must take you into Fort Loncine, and you must be blindfolded. These are my orders whenever we find strangers in the vicinity of the defences."
"Very well," replied Kenneth with as good a grace as he could command, at the same time producing his handkerchief.
Guided by soldiers, the two blindfolded youths were led into the fort. Kenneth kept count of the number of paces before crossing the drawbridge; they totalled four hundred and eighty-five, which, allowing thirty inches for his long stride, meant that the glacis, or level grassy ground surrounding the fort, was a little over four hundred yards in breadth.
When the handkerchiefs were removed from their eyes the lads found themselves in a large vaulted room lighted by electricity. On three sides were several low-arched doorways, on the fourth a fairly broad gateway through which they had been brought. Although it was impossible to see straight into the open air, a distant glimpse of diffused daylight showed that this entrance communicated either with the glacis or else an enclosed portion of the fort that was exposed to the rays of the sun.