He told them that the Allies were mounting more and more big guns, and prophesied hot work again before long, and feared that this time "he"--by which simple comprehensive pronoun the Russian soldiers always referred to the hundred thousand men out there on the hill-side--the enemy--just as Jack and Jim had always used the term to designate Sir Denzil in their early days--Greski feared that "he," out of patience with the long delay and the sufferings it had entailed, would no longer confine his efforts to battering the forts, but would probably try to make an end of the town itself. "In which case," he said, "we may have to move over to the other side of the water. He can knock down the bastions to his heart's content; we can build them again faster than he can knock them down. But the town--that would be another matter." All the streets leading in from the hill-sides were barricaded, and a new line of huge entrenchments sprang up among the houses inside the town, half-way up the slope on which it was built. From their chosen look-out on that eastward slope the boy watched all that went on, inside and outside, with hungry anxious eyes. They noted the immense activities on both sides, and it seemed to them, as it had done before to Jim that things might go on like this for ever. "If we are really going to try another bombardment," said Jack slowly--he always spoke slowly and quietly now, a way he had got into through fear of straining his chest--"and if they keep it to the earthworks, it is all wasted time. The only way to end it is to smash the town and rush it over the pieces. It is doubtful kindness to spare it. Far better end the matter for all concerned. Then we could all go home and become human beings again. I've no fight left in me, Jim." "A couple of months on the flats will make you as sound as a bell," said Jim cheerfully. "The air here is full of gunpowder and dead men. What you want is Carne." "I've thought a good deal about it all while I lay there and couldn't talk," said Jack. "You'll have to take it all on, Jim. I shall be a broken man all my life--I feel it inside me; and Carron of Carne must be a whole man. You must take it on, Jim." "Don't let's talk about it, old man. We're not home yet. Time enough to go into all that when we get there. I wish to goodness Raglan would come right in and make an end of it." "It would be an awful business. But I don't see how we're going to end it any other way. And truly I wish it were ended, for I long to get home. All I want is to get home." Their friend Greski had so far escaped the dangers of his unpalatable duties in a manner little short of marvellous. He shirked nothing, and took his fair turns with the rest. And, though he hated Russia with all his heart, he laughingly confessed that when he was in the thick of things he forgot it all in his eagerness to win the fight.