become an involuntary carpet in the dense
darkness of the hole.

A sound of steps and of voices becomes distinct and draws nearer. From
the mass of the four men who tightly hung up the burrow, tentative
hands are put out at a venture. All at once Pepin murmurs in a stifled
voice, "What's this?"

"What?" ask the others, pressed and wedged against him.

"Clips!" says Pepin under his breath, "Boche cartridge-clips on the
shelf! We're in the Boche trench!"

"Let's hop it." Three men make a jump to get out.

"Look out, bon Dieu! Don't stir!--footsteps--"

They hear some one walking, with the quick step of a solitary man. They
keep still and bold their breath. With their eyes fixed on the ground
level, they see the darkness moving on the right, and then a shadow
with legs detaches itself, approaches, and passes. The shadow assumes
an outline. It is topped by a helmet covered with a cloth and rising to
a point. There is no other sound than that of his passing feet.

Hardly has the German gone by when the four cooks, with no concerted
plan and with a single movement, burst forth, jostling each other, run
like madmen, and hurl themselves on him.

"Kamerad, messieurs!" he says.

But the blade of a knife gleams and disappears. The man collapses as if
he would plunge into the ground. Pepin seizes the helmet as the Boche
is failing and keeps it in his hand.

"Let's leg it," growls the voice of Poupardin.

"Got to search him first!"

They lift him and turn him over, and set the soft, damp and warm body
up again. Suddenly he coughs.

"He isn't dead!"--"Yes, he is dead; that's the air."

They shake him by the pockets; with hasty breathing the four black men
stoop over their task. "The helmet's mine," says Pepin. "It was me that
knifed him, I want the helmet."

They tear from the body its pocket-book of still warm papers, its
field-glass, purse, and leggings.

"Matches!" shouts Blaire, shaking a box, "he's got some!"

"Ah, the fool that you are!" hisses Volpatte.

"Now let's be off like hell." They pile the body in a corner and break
into a run, prey to a sort of panic, and regardless of the row their
disordered flight makes.

"It's this way!--This way!--Hurry, lads--for all you're worth!"

Without speaking they dash across the maze of the strangely empty
trench that seems to have no end.

"My wind's gone," says Blaire, "I'm--" He staggers and stops.

"Come on, buck up, old chap," gasps Pepin, hoarse and brea