les, while I go
skirmishing."

Staggering away from his comrade, Henri reached the head of the
stairway and clambered down it, leaning against the side wall with both
hands, for his feet were terribly uncertain. Then, reaching the
gallery below, he turned along it, and in a little while, was within
easy reach of the hall in which he and Jules had been lying, when
suddenly the noise outside increased. There was a rush of steps
somewhere near at hand, a crashing explosion as a bomb was thrown
through an embrasure somewhere beyond him, and then a torrent of
figures poured into the place--a torrent of gesticulating, shouting
Frenchmen, of gallant Bretons, who had won their way to the western
edge of the fortress. Lamps appeared, and flaring torches too were
brought in by the soldiers, who at once proceeded to search that part
of Douaumont.

In a dream, as it were, shaken by what he had gone through, and
overcome somewhat by the sight and sound of friends, Henri had tumbled
to the floor again, as he heard an officer give vent to a sharp order.

"Drive the fellows on before you as far as you can," he shouted, "then
build up barricades across every corridor and gallery, and hold them
off till we can get more men in here and drive them out of the fortress
altogether. Bomb them, mes enfants! Blow them out of the place!
Douaumont belongs to France, and not to the Kaiser."

Yes, in a dream, Henri heard the words, and tried to raise his shaken
figure, tried his utmost to join them; and in a dream, too, he watched
the Bretons as they moved rapidly about and obeyed those orders. It
was perhaps a quarter of an hour later, perhaps only a few minutes, but
more likely half an hour after their first appearance, that, still in
the same hazy sort of way, still somewhat in dreamland, his head
whirling and his ears singing, Henri became aware of a strange fact, a
fact, however, which hardly struck him as peculiar at that moment, that
a man not far from him--one of those corpses stretched in the gallery
and illuminated by a torch thrust into a crevice of the masonry not far
away--was moving, was lifting his head craftily, was creeping along
over other bodies, and was peering round corners and watching the
Bretons.

"Strange!" thought Henri. "What on earth can the fellow be doing?
And--Christopher! He's not a Frenchman!"

That indeed was a peculiar thing; and, still in the same dazed sort of
way, Henri watched and wondered.

"