not imagine, but it was
fast going to ruin and save for the rotting fishing seine there was no
sign of human occupancy.

If only Archer were there it would not be half bad. But the thought of
his companion's loss sickened him and robbed the lonely spot of such
aspect of security as it might otherwise have had for him. Still, he
must go on, he must reach the boys in France, and fight for Archer too,
now--Archer, whom his own blundering had consigned to death in these
treacherous waters....

He looked out again through the doorway at the dull sky, and the rain
falling steadily upon the sullen water. It was a day to chill one's
spirit and sap one's courage. The whole world looked gray and cheerless.
Again, as on the night before, he heard the rattle of a train in the
distance. High up through the drenched murky air, a bird sped across the
river, and somehow its disappearance among the hills left Tom with a
sinking feeling of utter desolation. In Temple Camp, on a day like this,
they would be in Roy Blakeley's tent, telling stories....

"Anyway, it's better to be alone than in some German's house," he tried
to cheer himself. "We--I--kept away from 'em so far, anyway----"

He stopped, holding his breath, with every muscle tense, and his heart
sank within him. For out of that inner doorway came a sound--a sound
unmistakably human--tragically human, it seemed now, shattering his
returning courage and leaving him hopeless.

It was the sound of some one coughing!

CHAPTER XXI

COMPANY

Ordinarily Tom Slade would have stopped to think and would have kept his
nerve and acted cautiously; but he had not sufficiently recovered his
poise to meet this emergency wisely. He knew he could not swim away,
that capture was now inevitable, and instead of pausing to collect
himself he gave way to an impulse which he had never yielded to before,
an impulse born of his shaken nerves and stricken hope and the sort of
recklessness which comes from despair. What did it matter? Fate was
against him....

With a kind of defiant abandonment he limped to the little stone doorway
and stood there like an apparition, clutching the sides with trembling
hands. But whatever reckless words of surrender he meant to offer froze
upon his lips, and he swayed in the opening, staring like a madman.

For reclining upon a rough bunk, with knees drawn up, was Archibald
Archer, busily engaged in whittling a stick, his freckled nose wrinkling
up in a