ite a passable Frenchman. While they waited for darkness he paraded
the trench, shrugging his shoulders, and gesticulating. "Bon joor, mays
ong-fong," he remarked with a careless hand-wave. "Hey, gar-song!
Donney-moi du pang eh du beurre, si voo play--and donnay-moi swoy-song
cans--rapeed--exploseef! Merci, mes braves, mes bloomin' 'eroes ... mes
noble warriors, merci. Snapper, strike up the 'Conkerin' 'Ero,' if you
please."

Before the time came to go he added to his make-up by marking on his
face with a burnt stick huge black mustachios and an imperial, and
although the officer stared a little when he came along he ended by
laughing, and leaving 'Enery his "make-up" disguise.

An hour after dark the three slipped quietly over the parapet and out
through the barbed wire, dragging a stretcher after them. It was a
fairly quiet night, with only an occasional rifle cracking and no
artillery fire. A bright moon floated behind scudding clouds, and
perhaps helped the adventure by the alternate minutes of light and dark
and the difficulty of focusing eyes to the differences of moonlight and
dark and the blaze of an occasional flare when the moon was obscured.
Behind the parapet the Towers waited with rifles ready, and stared out
through the loopholes; and behind them the French artillery officer,
and his signalers standing by their telephone, also waited with the
loaded guns and ready gunners at the other end of the wire. The
watchers saw the dark blot of men and stretcher slip under the wires,
and slowly, very slowly, creep on through the long grass. Half-way
across, the watchers lost them amidst the other black blots and
shadows, and it was a full half-hour after when a private exclaimed
suddenly: "I see them," he said. "There, close where we saw the hand."

The moon vanished a moment, then sailed clear, throwing a strong
silvery light across the open ground, and showing plainly the German
wire entanglements and the black-and-white patchwork of their
barricade. There were no visible signs of the rescue party, for the
good reason that they had slipped into and lay prone in the wide shell
crater that held the wounded Frenchman. Far spent the man was when they
found him, for he had lain there three nights and two days with a
bullet-smashed thigh and the scrape across his skull that had led the
rest of his night patrol to count him dead and so abandon him.

Now the moon slid again behind the racing clouds, and patches of ligh