happen next?"

The first speaker was a delicate, pale-faced, spectacled Breton; the
second, a vivacious individual from Paris, who, like Henri and Jules,
had had the misfortune to be in Germany when the war broke out. Their
eager questions were followed by the somewhat phlegmatic and casual
words of an Englishman--a red-headed, red-cheeked, healthy-looking
individual, who, in spite of short commons, still looked bulky.

"Someone's lost his head," he said caustically, with a growl, sitting
up and looking about him. "I'll get the reason in two guesses:
someone's trying to escape, or someone has escaped."

Something very dreadful might really have happened, judging by the
commotion in the camp, by the shouts of the sentries, and by the
firing. The Governor himself--living aloof from the individuals
interned in the place and under his administration--heard the racket
and came out, buttoning up his tunic, alarmed, his thoughts in a whirl,
eager to discover what had given rise to the commotion; and Henri and
Jules, like the rest of their companions, were, as one may imagine,
just as curious and just as eager.

"Whatever the ruction is, whatever the cause, the point where it
commenced is over there, behind those huts in the far corner," said the
former, watching the German guards race across the place and listening
to their shouts and to the loud commands of the non-commissioned
officers amongst them. "Let's saunter in that direction. Come along."

And saunter they did, being joined in a little while by a number of
people interned in the camp; and amongst them by the red-headed,
red-cheeked, and healthy-looking individual who boasted, somewhat
loudly it is to be feared at times, of his English nationality. Not
that such boastings disgusted the unhappy people interned at Ruhleben,
for it did them good in those days of depression to hear a man--a
robust man such as this individual--proud of his birth, and still
possessed of sufficient spirit to glory in it, to draw comparisons
between himself, his French, his Belgian, and his Japanese
fellow-prisoners, and Germans in general, The man's swagger, in fact,
delighted them, and helped to bolster up the fading spirits of many an
unfortunate captive in the camp--of many a man, who, but for the jibes
and uncomplimentary remarks of this robust prisoner, would long since
have given up hope and have subsided into melancholy.

"What a row!" he scoffed, as side by side with Jules