de this
last discovery when the officer in question--that arrogant, snappy
little individual, who peered about him with an indefinite something
which stamped him as a man of lower caste, one who had gained promotion
from the ranks--rose to his feet, a cigarette in the corner of his
mouth, and swaggered towards the prisoners, his hands thrust deep in
his pockets, his head pushed forward, and a truculent, domineering,
brutal air about him. Halting in front of the two prisoners, he gave
them the benefit of a stare which would have been rude at any time, and
which even warfare hardly excused, and then, without the smallest
warning, so swiftly in fact that Henri was staggered, he suddenly drew
one hand out of his pocket and dealt Jules a blow across the jaw with
his open hand which sent that young fellow staggering.

"Ha, ha! That moved you," the German laughed, turning his head over
his shoulder to make sure that his brother officers had watched the
movement. "That's stirred you up, my friend! Yes, my friend--for
don't forget we have met before, haven't we? What, you don't remember?
Then let me tell you: at Ruhleben, my friend, my Frenchman--at
Ruhleben, where I happen to remember very thoroughly the manner in
which you treated me. Do you forget, then? Do you deny that it was
you who crept through that tunnel, and, breaking a hole through the
earth beyond the entanglements, reached the open; and later, when I
followed--having dared the journey along the tunnel--you and that huge
brute of an Englishman--that swine of an Englishman--who was with you,
pulled me up as if I were a puppy and threw me back again, shaking the
teeth out of my head almost? Burr!"

The little dried-up German officer's eyes flashed vengefully as he
spoke of the matter, and he was all the more incensed an instant later
when, rather anticipating some fun--for to the German comrades of this
officer the ill-treatment of a prisoner was certainly fun--these men
drew nearer, and, hearing his words, one of them--a huge, fat, unwieldy
person, with flabby cheeks and pendulous chin, to say nothing of the
huge girth which he presented--giggled and chortled loudly, and
suddenly placed a heavy hand on the lieutenant's shoulder--a hand the
weight of which caused him to stagger.

"Drew you out like a puppy, ho?" he shouted. "Drew our dear Max up out
of the earth as a bird draws a worm; and then had the daring, the
effrontery, to dash our immaculate, if not