Unfortunately at that moment one of the troopers struck a match and lit a candle. This only added to the fellow's drunken fury, and to our horror we saw him pull a huge clasp-knife from one of his pockets. We all sprang to our feet, but the drunken man, selecting a trooper against whom he evidently had a grudge, made a rush for him; at the same time the candle was upset, and in the dark we could hear the two men struggling and rushing about the cell. "Who has got a match?" I shouted. As ill luck would have it, nobody could find one for the moment, so, unwilling to be ripped open in the dark, I groped my way towards a recess where "_jules_" stood, and closed the door behind me. A few minutes, perhaps but a few seconds, later I heard Piatte's deep bass voice saying, "No you don't, my children, no you don't!" I carefully peeped out, slightly opening the door. The candle had been re-lighted, and in the middle of the cells stood Piatte, in uniform, holding two men, one by his coat-collar, and the other by the wrist. It appears that Piatte had returned to barracks drunk that night, and had been taken to the lock-up, but, being in a very quiet mood when "boozed," he had merely gone to lie down in a corner. He had been aroused by the noise of the fight, and had immediately jumped up to separate the belligerents. It was dark when he first tackled them, and in the struggle he had been stabbed through the arm. In the meantime some one had found a match and re-lighted the candle just as I emerged from my place of safety. It was superb to see the Hercules Piatte holding these two men, absolutely frenzied as they were, as easily as if they had been mere babies. "Put down your knives, you beggars," he said to them, and as the man who had begun the row, and whose wrist he held, swore that he would do no such thing, but that he would soon have his knife through Piatte's digestive organs, the latter gave a wrench to his wrist which made the weapon drop to the ground. Some of us had in the meantime disarmed the other fellow, and Piatte then addressed them: "Are you going to be quiet and go to sleep, you silly beggars?" A torrent of abuse was the only reply, and the two combatants continued to swear they would have one another's blood. "Very well!" said Piatte. "If you are so anxious to knock each other about here goes!" and so saying, he banged the two men one against the other half a dozen times as if they had been mere puppets. He then let them go. "Got enough of it, my boys?" he asked grimly.