"He's very sick," replied Bob. "Especially as he gave the whole show away in his letter. Luckily the mater took it from the postman herself, and she doesn't think they can possibly have seen it. But there it is--one never knows. It is the beastly ingratitude that gets over me. The mater rigged that girl out from top to toe, and paid her jolly well, too, and Van Drissel had the run of the house, and then went away with three boxes of the brigadier's cigars into the bargain. A German isn't a human being when you come to look at it--he's just a mean beast, a bully when he's top dog, and a grovelling worm when he's cornered. Does your crush take many prisoners, Dan?" Dan Dunn smiled, and his faultless teeth gleamed in the coffee-brown of his face. "Am I compelled to answer that question, your worship?" he said, with an odd twinkle in his grey eyes, but he had already answered it to their complete satisfaction. "Do you?" he said. "A few Saxons now and again, when they put up their hands," replied Captain Bob. "They're sick to death of the whole business, but Prussians or Bavarians, no. We've 'had some,' and we're not looking for more trouble." Smithers made his appearance from the adjoining dug-out, which was their kitchen, and when Bob had fixed up the folding table and Dennis had dragged a Tate sugar box, which acted as cupboard, into the centre of the floor, they drank hot tea, which was good, and ate sardines and bread and butter, and finished up with jam, which Dan Dunn passed with an apologetic grin. "No, thanks; we had enough of that at Anzac," he said. "Forty flies to the spoonful and enteric to follow. Our boys put in a requisition for apricot so that you could see them better, but it didn't come off." After tea they smoked and talked over things, especially the new divisions that were marching up in a never-ending stream, and the huge shell stores at the artillery dumps, which had struck Dan Dunn very forcibly as his battalion passed them. And then Bob, having duties to attend to, went away in the gathering dusk, and they hung a ground sheet over the door and lit a candle, and Dan, with his huge arms behind his head, told in his quiet drawl of Quinn's Post and Lone Pine, and had hard things to say about the Higher Command, to all of which Dennis listened, enthralled, with his elbows on his knees. At five minutes to ten by the wristlet watch there came a cough from the other side of the ground sheet, and Dan picked himself up. "Right-o, Hawke!" called Dennis, with a glance at the watch. "Here's a spare revolver for you, Dan, or would you rather have a rifle?" "Rifle's in the way if it's a long crawl," said his cousin. "I'll take the Smith and Wesson, old man." Dennis settled his cap firmly on his head and extinguished the candle. On either side of the door of the dug-out, as they pulled aside the ground sheet and came up the steps, a dark figure loomed--Harry Hawke and his chum, Tiddler.