"Clear!" shouted Jack Jaikes, "I will fetch the men. Up with the gun." And he drew Allerdyce off the top of the mitrailleuse as one might gather a wet rag. The storm passed and as we panted upwards the bullets still tore our ranks. It could not be done. We had not the force. We paused half-way and blocked the wheels with stones so that she would not slip back. "Great God, what's that?" I turned at the anguish and surprise in the voice of Jack Jaikes, and I saw clear under the rain-washed splendours of the moon Keller Bey walking down the main Cours of Aramon. One hand held aloft a white flag, and on the other side clasping his arm was--Alida! I dreamed--I was sure I dreamed. That bullet--those fellows knocked over--Allerdyce smiling and abominably limp on the top of his own gun--Jack Jaikes gathering him up--all these things had crazed me, and no wonder. I saw "cats in corners," as I used to do in old college days when I studied too much and too long. But yet I looked and saw the vision continued. Moreover I heard. Keller Bey was calling out something as he waved the flag. Black cats did not speak. They keep an exact distance away--about four yards and always in the corner of a room or in a stairway--never in the open. What was he saying? One word recurred. "Treve!--Treve!--Treve!" "I proclaim a truce in the name of the Internationale!" Mocking laughter answered him. The Internationale! What did they care for the Internationale? They were out to kill and to take. Little groups began to gather at the dark alley mouths. I could see the glitter of rifles and bayonets. Present fear was arrested when they saw us withdrawing our guns. Hope sprang into their minds that they might capture the mitrailleuse abandoned halfway up. Their losses stung them to a wild and reckless fury. I do not know whence the first bullets came--I think from the north end of the Cours Nationale, where some men had been busy removing their dead and wounded. At any rate it was the signal for a general discharge. The streets and alley-ways vomited fire. The crackle of rifle shots sprang from the windows of houses. Somehow we found ourselves outside on the Cours. We had abandoned the gun. Jack Jaikes seemed to be giving some kind of instructions, but I could not make out what he was saying. What I saw was too terrible--Keller Bey on the ground, the white flag of truce stained with blood, and Alida kneeling beside him. "Take them up!" yelled Jack Jaikes, "run for it!" Before me strode Hugh Deventer, huge and blond like a Viking. He caught up Alida and would have marched off with her, but that Jack Jaikes barred the way. "Idiot," he cried, "who can carry a man of Keller's size but you? Give the girl to Cawdor!" I think at that moment Hugh could have killed him, but he gave me Alida as bidden, and bending he shouldered the dead weight of the wounded man. "Put him higher, then, you fool," he shouted to Jack Jaikes.