"It's half-past nine; I had no idea that it was so late! Ha! there goes a mass of infantry along the hill. See it? They're headed for Saarbrück! Georges, what's that big marquee in the wheat-field?"
"The Emperor is there," said Georges, proudly; "those troopers are the Cuirassiers of the Hundred-Guards. See their white mantles? The Prince Imperial is there, too. Poor little man--he looks so tired and bewildered."
Jack kept his glasses fixed on the white dot that marked the imperial headquarters, but the air was hazy and the distance too great to see anything except specks and points of white and black, slowly shifting, gathering, and collecting again in the grain-field, that looked like a tiny square of pale gilt on the hill-top.
Suddenly a spot of white vapour appeared over the spire of Saarbrück, then another, then three together, little round clouds that hung motionless, wavered, split, and disappeared in the sunshine, only to be followed by more round cloud clots. A moment later the dull mutter of cannon disturbed the morning air, distant rumblings and faint shocks that seemed to come from an infinite distance.
Jack handed back the binoculars and opened his own field-glasses in silence. Neither spoke, but they instinctively leaned forward, side by side, sweeping the panorama with slow, methodical movements, glasses firmly levelled. And now, in the valley below, the long roads grew black with moving columns of cavalry and artillery; the fields on either side were alive with infantry, dim red squares and oblongs, creeping across the landscape towards that line of silver, the Saar.
"It's a flank movement on Wissembourg," said Jack, suddenly; "or are they swinging around to take Saint-Johann from the north?"
"Watch Saarbrück," muttered Georges between his teeth.
The slow seconds crept into minutes, the minutes into hours, as they waited there, fascinated. Already the sharper rattle of musketry broke out on the hills south of the Saar, and the projectiles fell fast in the little river, beyond which the single spire of Saarbrück rose, capped with the smoke of exploding shells.
Jack sat sketching in a canvas-covered book, raising his brown eyes from time to time, or writing on a pad laid flat on his saddle-pommel.
The two young fellows conversed in low tones, laughing quietly or smoking in absorbed silence, and even their subdued voices were louder than the roll of the distant cannonade.
Suddenly the wind changed and their ears were filled with the hollow boom of cannon. And now, nearer than they could have believed, the crash of volley firing mingled with the whirring crackle of gatlings and the spattering rattle of Montigny mitrailleuses from the Guard artillery.