"It'll be good for your cold!" shouted little Gilissen, who was acting as our rear-guard. And all five of us, keeping up our speed, laughed heartily. Presently we came to a road. Jeanjean rushed a little way towards us, then stopped short and muttered: "Attention, Lieutenant!" I looked and saw a German sentinel, leaning on his weapon, stationed at a little building some five yards away from us. There was no time to manoeuvre; I turned to my men and, whilst running, shouted out to them "Es geht wohl! Kommen Sie hierdurch!" We crossed the road under his very nose and rushed into a little wood which skirted the opposite side. The sentinel did not move, deceived probably, thanks to the dim light, to my words, and to the audacity of our manoeuvre. To our joy, at the other end of the wood, we saw a dark line stretching out towards us. It was the labyrinth of fir-trees, of tall broom and brushwood, which skirts the northern part of the country. We crossed a glade, and then a clearing and a railroad. The enemy post there had not time to stop us. There was another wood and then, at last, we were in the thicket. Behind us, we gradually heard less and less noise, and the firing was farther off and at longer intervals. Still running, we described a series of zigzags and curves, leaving behind us ditches, clearings, and glades.... Finally, in the midst of a patch of young fir-trees, I fell down. I could not have got up again though for anything. The others stretched themselves out near me and we all lay there, like so many dead men, in the wet grass. The day broke, a fine rain fell persistently, wetting us through to the skin. We were shivering in every limb. Jeanjean coughed, snored, and talked in his sleep. The two Flemish men joked, swore, and insulted each other, each treating the other as a coward.... Gilissen, the little Liege "_rossai_," was the only one who kept silence. He was trying, conscientiously, to sleep with one eye and to take stock of our surroundings with the other one. I reminded him of that time when he had been on observation for the Barchon Fort and had remained for forty-eight hours perched up on his steeple, surrounded by Germans, and had come back to the Fort with all the material of the observation post. Jeanjean, who certainly did not appear able to sleep well, now felt it his duty to compose the _menu_. "Anchovies," he said, "salmon trout, stuffed chicken, cream cakes," and I do not know what beside. I found half a turnip in my pocket, Gilissen had three sweetmeats, and the ground near us was strewn with acorns. We were all right, and could certainly sustain a regular siege! I looked at my map, a Touring Club map, which was the only one I had. To my horror, I discovered that all the incidents of the night, and the various turns we had been obliged to make, had made us describe an immense semi-circle and that, at that moment, we were less than a mile from the frontier and surrounded on all sides by Germans.