Silently, so silently that it seemed to Horace as though he were watching a play of shadows, two men arose from the ground behind the sentries. The blue steel in the peasant's hand flashed in the faint moonlight of an aged moon and the sentry fell with a choked cry. From the other sentry's throat there came no sound and the dumb struggle was a fearful thing to see. The hunchback's fingers, however, would have strangled an ox, and, before a minute had passed, a dead man lay on the ground, the iron grip still on his windpipe. At that instant, Horace heard a voice humming the snatch of a German song and the third sentry came along the path, returning to his post. The boy fingered his revolver, but he could not bring himself to shoot a man unprepared. His gorge rose at the thought. Yet, if he allowed the sentry to pass, the alarm would be given and he and his companions would be killed. A trick of boyhood flashed through his mind. Quickly seizing a dead branch which lay near by, he thrust it between the sentry's legs as he passed, with a sudden jerk tripping him up, so that he fell headlong from the narrow stony path into the bushes on the side. Then the boy sped for the wharf like a deer. "The third sentry!" he gasped. There was no time for explanations. The two fugitives and the peasant leaped into the boat and a few short, sharp strokes took them well into the strong current of the river. The sentry who had been tripped, quite unsuspicious and blaming only the roughness of the path in the darkness, got up, grumbling, rubbed himself where he had been bruised and searched for his spiked helmet, which had fallen off. These few seconds were salvation for the fugitives. Before half a minute had elapsed, the sentry reached the landing-stage and saw the stretched-out bodies of his comrades. Taken by surprise, he lost another ten or twenty seconds staring around him before he caught sight of the boat on the river. Then, and not till then, did the sentry grasp that a surprise attack had been made and that his fall on the path had been purposed and not due to an accident. Raising his rifle, he fired, but the shots flew wide. "I heard the Germans couldn't shoot straight!" declared the hunchback, in contempt. "Now I know it's true." Horace thought the bullets were quite close enough, and when one of them nipped the oar he was using and raised a sliver of wood from the feathered blade, he had an uncomfortable feeling inside. But, before the alarm could be widely given, the boat shot into the shadow of the western bank and reached the shore in safety. French advance posts took the three in charge as soon as they touched land, and, when morning arrived, brought them before the ranking officer. Horace was able to give but little information, but Croquier, who had read widely of military tactics, was able to combine the various items that he had gleaned during the escape to make a report of great value and importance.