The staff cap, with its scarlet band and gold-edged peak, spun round in the air and dropped half a dozen yards away, as its late wearer sprang on to the parapet and vanished out of sight. "Great Scott! Are you mad, Dennis?" shouted Dan, still holding him tightly; but there was no madness in the boy's face as he turned it to his cousin. "You blithering ass! You seventeen different assorted kinds of an utter idiot!" yelled Dennis. "I know that man--he is a German spy, and you've made me miss him!" Dan Dunn's arms released their grip and fell nerveless to his sides. "Old chap!" he exclaimed in a voice of bitter regret. "How was I possibly to tell that? Perhaps it's not too late now!" And he bounded on to the sandbags, but there was no sign of Anton van Drissel. For a moment they leaned side by side over the parapet, trying to penetrate the darkness that once more enveloped No Man's Land, and then as Captain Bob came hurrying up, blowing his whistle for all he was worth to recall the retiring platoon, Dennis drew his own, and the shrill signal brought the men tumbling back again into the fire trench. "Line up!" cried the captain as Dennis and Dan, both speaking at once, told him what had happened. "I knew something had gone wrong," said Bob bitterly. "What a thousand pities the skunk got clear! Well, it's no use crying over spilt milk, and the artillery's on them now. Do you hear that?" The momentary lull was broken by a tremendous booming from our guns in the rear, and a hurricane of shells began to burst on the German front line trench and the ground beyond it, a steady, systematic bombardment, which grew in volume and increased in intensity. "Do I hear it?" shouted Dennis. "One can't help hearing it. What do you mean?" "I mean," replied his brother, making himself heard with considerable difficulty, "that it is the beginning of the artillery preparation, which will continue day and night without ceasing for the next week. After that the great push is coming. That is what I mean!" The 18-pounders, the 9.2's, the big howitzers farther to the rear--guns of every kind and calibre blended in one infernal concert, which extended for more than eighty miles, from the Yser to the Somme. "If those Brandenburgers are wise they'll stay where they are to-night," said the Australian corporal. "Hallo, Fritz! Why, Dennis, here's your prisoner, after all." A white-faced man, crying "Kamerad!" at the top of his voice, climbed in over the sandbags, trembling like a leaf, and Dennis saw that it was indeed the Saxon he had captured at the bottom of the crump-hole over there.