to escape capture, and eager to rejoin the French forces and
again fight the Germans, the _poilus_ scrambled about in the battered
trench, or closely adjacent to it, taking up cartridges, despoiling the
dead of their haversacks, from which they ejected all but the food
contents, while every man loaded himself with as many water-bottles as
he could conveniently carry.

"It's still snowing hard," said Henri, when some ten minutes had passed
and the band was again collected. "Don't let us get into a flurry, or
spoil our chances by being too hurried. Let's number off, and see how
many we are."

"One! Two! Three!"----

Without a word of command the man on the left started, and Henri, at
the far end of the line, announced his own number. It was twenty.

"Good!" he told them. "More than I thought. Twenty resolute men
fighting for France, for la belle France, my comrades----"

"Ah! For la belle France, for home, for victory!" the veteran shouted.

"Yes, for victory. And listen, my friends; we may help towards it,"
Henri told them. "Resolute men, if they can reach some strong position
in that fort, may well assist our friends battling farther back on the
plateau. Well, now, there are twenty of us, and I see that there are
half a dozen or more ammunition-boxes."

"Ten," the veteran corrected him instantly; "ten, Monsieur Henri"--it
had come to "Monsieur" now, such was the veteran's opinion of our hero.

"Good! Ten boxes of cartridges is it? Ten thousand rounds. Now let's
see to the water-bottles. How many are there?"

The men, on returning to the spot where Henri stood, had at once
deposited their finds at the bottom of the trench, so that there was no
difficulty in making an inventory; and now a mere glance discovered the
fact that there were more than two water-bottles per man, all filled,
as Henri was assured, and all big ones.

"One bottle will last a careful man, say, two days, eh?" he asked.

"In the dungeons of the fort, three days, Monsieur Henri," the veteran
replied; "and, besides, it's bitterly cold weather, when a man does not
need to drink so much."

"And food? Well, we must guess at that; but it appears from the number
of haversacks, and from the way in which some of them are bulging, that
there will be sufficient for some days."

"One mo'!" called Jules at that instant. "Each man's got his rifle and
bayonet, that's understood; there's ammunition, say, for a four-days'
fight, and wat