Our captain gives the order: "Both wings bend backward. Fire at will!" And from our skirmish line comes the smothered beating of the Mannlichers--single and separate at first, then more and more concerted, and finally becoming one big volume, with a roaring echo, which envelops the trunks and the tree tops and floats out behind our back into the open. The shots of our opponents sing over our heads and strike sharply into the timber. The enemy is now here, now there. Our captain lies on the skirmish line. He has taken the gun of a wounded man and aims long and carefully before he pulls the trigger. Suddenly he springs up. For a moment we see his square, wrinkled face, stiff and impassive as ever; then he swings the rifle butt over his head and shouts: "Forward!" The companies are in a narrow, closely concentrated line behind him. An iron rain greets us. We dash over the first corpses of the enemy. From the soft bed of the fir needles long, blood-stained arms stretch after us--arms of men with yellowish, distorted faces. Again we are forced to seek cover on the ground. Too many of our people have already fallen. And the enemy, whose front is not yet uncovered, bends around on both sides of us. We must have regard for the safety of our rear. Our first skirmish line takes the form of a shallow, wide-spread curve. III--"WE DO NOT SURRENDER!" On the wings the tumult breaks out anew. The captain crawls on his stomach along the front. His people must know that he is with them. All at once he receives a start. There lies a Russian officer, among our soldiers. His youthful, handsome face is as white as the snow on the branches. His eyes roll and the pale lips try to form a word. The captain bends over him. A file leader says: "Breast and upper leg." They bandage the badly wounded man and give him something to drink. Our captain wants to go ahead. Then the Russian says to him softly and in correct German, "Don't shoot!" The captain pushes his cap back on his neck and lifts his eyebrows. "How so? Will you surrender?" The other tries to smile. His big, fine teeth gleam white. "We are Don Cossacks. We do not surrender. But we have had nothing to eat. It is four days already. The horses are dead. And the Russians are already far away." "How many are you?" asks the commandant. "We were strong, six sontnias, perhaps. But the woods, the woods! There we stick day and night. And fight and fight. Each for himself, each alone, each without hope." Our captain presses the wounded man, who seeks to raise his upper body, softly back on the ground. And while the wood right and left rings with the echoes of musketry he kneels hesitatingly beside the Cossack officer. For the first time something of a soft expression steals over his impassive countenance. There is a slight quiver about the curves of his mouth. "You must surrender," he says, after a pause, curtly and decisively. "It is an unequal combat." The Russian shakes his head.