cover."

"Aye! Cover--that's it! Out here we should be shot to rags,"
exclaimed a veteran. "Now, Henri, let's have your decision, and
quickly, too, for the snow may stop at any moment."

"Then here it is: take up every cartridge you can find--boxes of
ammunition if you can hit on them--get as much food from the haversacks
of the killed as you can carry, and then let's creep towards the fort.
There's a gateway on this side, for I noticed it in the early hours of
the morning. Let's get behind those concrete and stone walls and
search for a spot where we can hold out and stand a siege till our
fellows counter-attack and relieve us."

The veteran _poilu_ of the party smote his hands together and tilted
his steel helmet backward.

"Mon Dieu," he cried, "but that is it! Our Henri has thought of a
splendid thing for us. Ecoutez! Then I will tell you, I who have been
of the Verdun garrison, not only during this war, but in peace times, I
who helped to remove the big guns when the Kaiser showed us that guns
behind a fort were no longer useful. There are caverns underneath that
masonry, my boys, big galleries, and fortified chambers, to which even
a big shell will hardly descend. Yes, there are rooms down below in
the bowels of the earth which will shelter us, and hundreds beside us.
It is a magnificent plan. I, who know the place, can lead you; and, of
a truth, we will find a spot where men such as we are, fighting for
France, can hold up a hundred of the enemy. Be busy, then! Pick up
cartridges, seek for food and water."

"Yes--and water!" shouted Jules, darting from the trench and stooping
over the nearest figure. All about them were the battered trenches of
that thin force of noble Frenchmen who had fought hand to hand with the
Brandenburgers. There were the bodies of the slain--of friend and
foe--lying in every sort of posture, some half in and half out of the
trenches; some, alas! unrecognizable, for such is the effect of high
explosives; and others, yet again, almost buried already by upheavals
of earth as shells burst close beside them. There were not a few
wounded, too, who lay waiting the succour which might come some hours
hence, and which, it was quite possible, might never come, for in a
little while, no doubt, French fire would command the ground on which
they lay, and neither troops nor hospital bearers could cross it.

Very eagerly, then, for every one of the men in Henri's party was
anxious