on the barbed wire which formed the fences about the camp at
Ruhleben, for though without doubt Henri and his friends lay invisible,
close to the ground, the burly figure of the German stood out, huge and
broad and solid, silhouetted faintly in the darkness by lights
flickering from the range of shelters on the far side of the camp. As
for Jules, he, too, quickly secured missiles with which to bombard the
sentry, and, as if to show how ready he was for the work in hand, gave
vent again to one of those subdued giggles; whereat Stuart growled--a
fierce growl--and nudged him violently. Then, of a sudden, the
attention of all three was fixed on the hole through which they had
emerged, and upon the depths below it. The rough sides of the tunnel,
the debris and earth which they themselves had dragged down to the foot
of it as they cut their path upward, every stone, every clod, was
visible, as the torch--now closer at hand--lit up every crevice. Then
the torch itself came into view, the hand which gripped it, the sleeve
about the wrist, and finally the shoulders and the head of the
individual stumbling and forcing his way towards them.

"Ach, Himmel! What a find! The wretches were almost escaping. What
perseverance, though; what hard work; and, yes, what hard luck to have
been discovered just on the eve of breaking out of their prison!"

It was the small, snappy under-officer who had appeared on the scene
outside the hut but a few minutes earlier, and who, discovering the
Sergeant there browbeating the unfortunate sentry, had turned upon him
like a dog, had snapped at his heels as it were, had changed the aspect
of affairs entirely, and had ended in putting the non-commissioned
officer under arrest, and in himself capturing those unlucky prisoners
who were hiding in the tunnel.

Doubtless it was a brilliant evening's work for him--work which might
even bring him reward--who knows?--might even, in the end, bring him
that Iron Cross which the Kaiser has been so fond of distributing. Men
in the ranks of the German army had received that reward for lesser
acts than that of the under-officer this evening; there are heroes in
the armies of the All-Highest Kaiser who have been decorated with that
Iron Cross for valour, and others who wear the emblem for deeds which
make the rest of civilization shudder. Yes, indeed, the under-officer
might well earn such reward, for he had shown acuteness, promptitude,
and dispatch in ca