Hoarse cries rise again, increased to the point of frenzy, then weaken and finally die away. The chasseurs are holding fast! One of my men exclaim: "And _that's_ their stopping place." Easily I follow the sounds of the fight. All my senses appear to have become abnormally sharp. And so I am able to perceive some vaguely defined dark figures who move silently not twenty yards away to the right of us. I strive with all my force to pierce the darkness, but my eyes are filled with water and fail me. So, motioning with my hand, I say in a low voice to one of my men: "Look there, Chabeau. Can you see anything?" "Yes, Lieutenant." "What is it?" "Some Boches. They are flanking us." "Are there many of them?" "No, not a pile of them." "Can you count them?" Two or three seconds and then: "I believe there are seven of them." His words confirm my own conclusions. A few stragglers, undoubtedly, who have lost their way in this infernal mêlée of the night. At my order ten of my men face towards the right, and in each one's ear I whisper: "Wait until I give the word to fire. Do not hurry and aim well." The Boches have halted, hesitating, undecided; they form a dark group framed in a stillness which seems almost palpitating. "Fire!" A spurt of flame, followed instantly by cries of agony and terror: "Kamerad! Kamerad!" Only two remain standing and they rush towards me. The younger of them snatches at my hands covering them with tears and saliva. He utters a few incoherent words which reveal the tempest of fear obsessing him: "I am not a Prussian; I am a Swabian. The Swabians have never done you any harm ... the Swabians did not want this war...." And his eyes glare into mine in a very frenzy of revolting supplication. "I have given the French wounded, water. My comrades also: that is what we Swabians are!" He talks and talks, and always the same monotonous refrain is repeated: "_Das machen die Schwaben._ That is what the Swabians do." Then, with ever mounting incoherence, he tells me other things; that he is an electrician, that he can walk fifty yards on his hands ... he would have done it instantly too if I had but given the signal, possessed as he was by terrible fear, tortured by the thirst for life. The other was passed from one man to another, palpitating and terror-stricken: we had not so far made any other prisoners! My men jeered at him like curious children. They listened with an air of wisdom to the conversation between myself and the German. Not ill-naturedly they amused themselves by causing him involuntarily to hunch his neck down between his shoulders when they placed a hand upon him. And each time, they laughed heartily and boyishly.