"He has no right to live," said the latter, "and yet he lives, and may live. It is marvellous." But then he had not known how the open-air life on the flats prepared a man for contingencies such as this. It was long before Jack could speak above a whisper without suffering, and then at last he was able to sit propped up with pillows and to take an interest in things in general, But the gardens were full of hyacinths and crocuses, and there were even patches of them on the troubled hill-sides, among the white tents and muddy trenches, before he tasted fresh air again. Then Jim would lead him on his strong arm, very slowly and with many a rest, to a sheltered place whence he could see what was going on, and so keen was his interest that it was no easy matter to get him home again. And the officers they met on the road would stop them, and politely inquire after Jack's health, and express their pleasure at his recovery, and discuss matters with them, and gallantly express their conviction that the siege would go on for ever, but admit all the same that if it could honourably end they would not be sorry. They had another ray of hope when the news came of the death of the Tsar. Would it mean an end of the terrible struggle, and release, and home? Their hearts--and not theirs only--beat high with hope, and fell the lower when the word came that the fight was to go on to the bitter end. CHAPTER LXV THE CUTTING OF THE COIL With the better weather things quickened somewhat--the things of Nature, to life; the things of Man, to death. Man strove with all his might to end his fellow man, and drenched the earth with blood: and the spring flowers pushed valiantly through the blood-soaked sods and seemed to wonder what it was all about. The boys learned from Greski that the chief bones of contention now were the rifle-pits. The lines and burrows of attack and defence had by this time run so close to one another that in places you could almost throw a stone from one to the other. No smallest chance of harassing the enemy was lost on either side. Both sides had learnt by experience what damage and annoyance to the working parties could be effected by small bodies of picked marksmen hidden in sunken pits in advance of the lines, and the struggles over and round and in these tiny strongholds were endless, and furious beyond description. He told them how sixty Russians had held their pits near what he called the Korniloff Bastion, but which Jack and Jim knew more familiarly as the Malakoff, against five thousand Frenchmen, until reserves came up and the Frenchmen had to retire. And how some crack shot in one of the English pits was potting their men even in the streets of the town, twelve hundred yards away, so that passage that way was no longer permitted.