'Yes, my word,' and he spoke it in such a way that they felt him to be their master. It was one of those cases where one personality dominated thirty. 'Are you an officer?' said one of the Germans after a pause. 'You speak like a gentleman, but your uniform is that of a Tommy.' 'No matter what I am, I give you my promise, and I never broke my promise yet.' Again it was not the words which affected them, it was the manner in which he spoke them. He might have been a king speaking to his subjects. 'Now then, which shall it be?' he went on; 'if we stay here, in all probability we shall every one of us be killed. Listen to that! There! there! don't you feel it?--the whole earth is trembling, I tell you, and all these fortifications of yours will be nothing but so much cardboard! And our men have mountains of munitions, man, mountains! I have seen them. It will be rather a horrible death, too, won't it? Whether we are buried alive, or blown up by bombs, it won't be pleasant. It seems such a pity, too, when in ten minutes from now we can be in safety.' The man was working a miracle; he was accomplishing that which, according to every canon of common sense, was impossible. He was a prisoner in the power of thirty men, and yet he was persuading them to become his prisoners. Even Sergeant Smith, who could not understand a word of what was being said, knew it. He knew it by the tense atmosphere of the place, by the look on the faces of the German soldiers. We had become so interested, that neither of us dared to move; we just sat and listened while the unknown man, with quiet, persuasive words, was working his will on them. As I said, I could not see his face. For one thing, the light was dim, and for another his features were turned away from me; but I could hear every word he said. Even above the roar of the artillery, which sounded like distant thunder, and in spite of the trembling earth, every tone reached me, and I knew that his every word was sapping the Germans' resistance, just as a strong current of water frets away a foundation of sand. What at first I had felt like laughing at, became to me first a possibility, then a probability, then almost a certainty. So excited did I become that, more than once, I longed with an intense longing to join my persuasions to that of the stranger. But when I tried to speak, no words came. It might have been as though some magician were at work, or some powerful mesmerist, who mesmerized his hearers into obedience. 'I say, you fellows,' said one of the Germans to his companions, 'what do you say? Our life here is one prolonged hell,--what is the use of it? Our officers tell us to hold on, hold on. And why should we hold on? Just to become fodder for cannon? I had four brothers, and every one of them is killed. Who's to look after my mother, if I am dead?'