One of the first of the wounded rescued from the leaky boat was my former companion, the Marquis Serra Cassano. He did not wish to join in the incipient stampede. With four toes of his foot shot away, he rose limpingly to assist the other wounded into our boat first, before he himself came in. Then with an air of pathetic aristocracy he seated himself by me, and wanted to know if any one had a cigaret to spare. We had four cigarets on the boat. The men took turns puffing them. A frantic mother had dropped her baby in the water. I jumped out and rescued it. Later on, she got separated from it, and I had it in my charge for several days--but that is not in the present story. We kept close watch on each other's boats till nightfall. As the other five would appear and disappear, we would be alternately cheered and frightened. It must have been nearly midnight when one of our sailors cried out that he saw a ship's light. But for a long while nothing appeared but thin threads of light that filtered through the fog. After some discussion as to whether it might not be an enemy craft, we approached the direction of the light, till it burst on us in a powerful, searching blaze. And we discerned the other boats converging toward it, mere moving yellow splurges in the gloom. The ship that was rescuing us was a French mine layer, the _Pluton_. It was hellish-looking, as it beetled over us, but none the less it looked like heaven, too! And now our boat-loads of survivors were close together, and suddenly everybody grew voluble and chatty. We shouted across the water to each other. I even heard a voice singing. We were saved! We were saved! THE STRATEGY OF SISTER MADELEINE _The Story of a French Captain's Escape from the Germans_ _Told by himself, and translated by G. Frederic Lees_ Few men who have succeeded in slipping through the clutching fingers of the Mailed Fist have such a moving record of adventure to their credit as Captain X----, who here relates his remarkable experiences. There is the true Stevensonian flavor in some of the episodes narrated; and at the same time the story has real historical value, since it opens with a graphic account of the Battle of Charleroi, which has not yet been described by the French Staff, or by any of the unofficial historians of the war. The officer's name is suppressed in deference to his own request when he related his experiences in the _Wide World Magazine_. I--MY EXPERIENCES AT THE BATTLE OF CHARLEROI