He peered into the darkness. Nothing there to cause alarm, so far as he could see, but still that disconcerting feeling of some unknown, unplaced menace. Tom decided to waken his pals. He was not afraid, in the sense of being a physical coward. It was the baffling mystery of the thing and what it might portend that was so disquieting. Perhaps it was just overwrought nerves; or maybe the strange surroundings in which he found himself when he awakened. He tapped Ollie two or three times upon the shoulder, and nudged George Harper with his foot. He disliked to deprive them of their sleep, but he felt that he must. It was not only the necessity of talking to them about this strange feeling that he could not get rid of; it was even more imperative that they return and join their company, which at any hour now might suddenly be ordered to renew the action. But even as Ollie and George almost simultaneously grunted sleepy and impatient objections to this treatment, although at the same time opening their eyes and starting upright, Tom would have given a great deal had he left them to their sleep—and silence. For, hardly the fraction of an instant before they had given half conscious utterance to their plaintive growls, Tom had seen, as clearly as though it had been daylight, the head, then the shoulders and half the body of a man rise suddenly from a shell hole ahead, as though directly at the sound. Instinctively Tom knew by the way the man moved that he was not wounded. Equally obvious was it that whoever he was he was not an American, for all this territory now was held by those forces, and one had no need to hide if he was a friend. This man was in the very act of swiftly climbing out of his hiding place when Tom spied him. At the first sound of the sleepy voices he had as suddenly dropped back and out of sight. Never for a second taking his eyes from the spot, Tom warned his two friends to silence in a way that quickly brought them to their senses, and they crept close to hear his briefly whispered statement of what he had seen. Unquestionably it was the same man they had been seeking before they dropped off to sleep. Each had a feeling of shame that they should have weakened that way when there was an urgent necessity before them. How long had they slept? It was a useless question. Two facts were apparent, however. It was still night, so they could not have been out of the hunt for long; and they knew the whereabouts of the enemy they sought. One method of capture presented itself to them, and that was to creep forward in a surrounding movement and then lay there, as close to the hole as they might, without themselves being discovered, and wait for the man to make his reappearance. They were without bombs and could not attack that way. They had no rifles, either, and were entirely dependent upon their automatics. Even with these, they realized, there was danger to themselves in the positions they would be in, in any cross firing.