To save a fall when napping, the prisoners lengthened their belts and buckled themselves each to a rung above the one upon which he sat. "While you were wishing awhile ago, Schneider, why didn't you wish for a boat?" "You'd joke on the way to the scaffold, young man," said the subdued firebrand, fixing a reproachful look on Billy. "Never say die," retorted the irrepressible youth. Another wearing night, and in Schneider's next trip for the meal bag his hip boots were none too long in the matter of preventing his taking on a cargo of water. But this third day of desperate contemplation was destined to be marked by an incident which resulted in the lifting of the weight of gloom--and the herald of light and liberation from an apparently hopeless imprisonment was four-footed. A few lines now in backward trend, to tell about the ambulance dogs, as many as a thousand, renowned for their excellent service for the Germans in both the eastern and western theaters of war. Each of the sanitary companies has attached to it four of these dogs, the German shepherd breed, marvelously trained and fitted for work on the battlefield, commanding everywhere eloquent tribute for their remarkable performances in finding the wounded and their acute scent on any trail. Stanislaws had long completed his packing of the biplanes, and many a time and oft had impatiently paced Commissary Square, as many times going to the military road upon which he had last seen his aviation comrades riding joyously away. "'Stanny' was in a stew," as Billy would have put it, and he was not averse to letting anyone about him know it. When night came word was passed from patrol to patrol, and back again, and no definite report of the missing aviators. An observer was secured from among the young officers in the camp, and Stanislaws himself piloted one of the biplanes on the return journey to the fortress. Roque was immediately advised of the mysterious disappearance of his three followers, and promptly indulged in some very emphatic comments not appropriate for parlor use. "You must fly again in an hour," he raged, "and I'll be with you." Stanislaws, though weary and nerve-strained through the exertions of the long flight just concluded and by the weight of anxiety, would not listen to the offer of brother aviators to relieve him of the added exertion of repeating such a journey without rest. "I'm going back with him," he stoutly maintained--and he did. At headquarters Roque took advantage of the first glimpse of daylight to institute work of inquiry, in which practice he was conceded to be without equal. But to no avail. The furthest outpost had seen the riders pass, and, fully satisfied with their credentials, had paid no further attention to their movements. Somewhere out on the boundless plain, alive or dead, were the three so earnestly and expertly sought for.