study it; and I give you my word I will take you back to the British
lines unhurt. And then your life as an English prisoner will be just a
picnic.'

'Your word!' said one of them scornfully, 'what is it worth? You are
only a Tommy.'

'Yes, my word,' and he spoke it in such a way that they felt him to be
their master. It was one of those cases where one personality
dominated thirty.

'Are you an officer?' said one of the Germans after a pause. 'You
speak like a gentleman, but your uniform is that of a Tommy.'

'No matter what I am, I give you my promise, and I never broke my
promise yet.'

Again it was not the words which affected them, it was the manner in
which he spoke them. He might have been a king speaking to his
subjects.

'Now then, which shall it be?' he went on; 'if we stay here, in all
probability we shall every one of us be killed. Listen to that!
There! there! don't you feel it?--the whole earth is trembling, I tell
you, and all these fortifications of yours will be nothing but so much
cardboard! And our men have mountains of munitions, man, mountains! I
have seen them. It will be rather a horrible death, too, won't it?
Whether we are buried alive, or blown up by bombs, it won't be
pleasant. It seems such a pity, too, when in ten minutes from now we
can be in safety.'

The man was working a miracle; he was accomplishing that which,
according to every canon of common sense, was impossible. He was a
prisoner in the power of thirty men, and yet he was persuading them to
become his prisoners. Even Sergeant Smith, who could not understand a
word of what was being said, knew it. He knew it by the tense
atmosphere of the place, by the look on the faces of the German
soldiers.

We had become so interested, that neither of us dared to move; we just
sat and listened while the unknown man, with quiet, persuasive words,
was working his will on them.

As I said, I could not see his face. For one thing, the light was dim,
and for another his features were turned away from me; but I could hear
every word he said. Even above the roar of the artillery, which
sounded like distant thunder, and in spite of the trembling earth,
every tone reached me, and I knew that his every word was sapping the
Germans' resistance, just as a strong current of water frets away a
foundation of sand. What at first I had felt like laughing at, became
to me first a possibility, then a probability, then almost a certa