"Russian. Read it."
The boy took the slip and pored over it for some minutes, either because the torch burnt dull or because he had not much knowledge of the language. They had left the body, which lay in shadow. Ian looked at that young, tired face without recognizing in it any of the sappers who were in Ruvno during the Russian retreat. Later on, he heard from a peasant that the Russians, when last in Ruvno, kept everybody away from the church and that at night they made noises, as with picks and spades.
"Go on," urged von Senborn impatiently. "I thought you spoke Russian like a native."
"It is hastily written," explained the other. "And therefore indistinct. But I think I have the meaning now."
"Well, for Hell's sake let me have it, too."
"You cannot take me alive," he read in his hard North German. "I have chosen how I shall die. When I have written this I mean to signal to my friends to shell the tower, before your men come back to mine it. And we, too, shall return, driving you to the very streets of Berlin. And Europe's wrongs shall be avenged. We Russians are slow; but neither stupid nor discouraged, as you pretend." He stopped and looked up.
"That all?" asked von Senborn.
"All." He returned the paper to his superior.
"Ja, ja," said a voice. "I see it now. He had himself bricked up in that tower, to signal and cover the retreat. He was no coward."
Nobody spoke. The incident had impressed them all. The man who gets himself bricked up with enough food to last till he is found out, is a hero. Von Senborn, having his head seen to by a surgeon, talked it over. Ian kept in the shadow, not wanting to be seen. Dazed though he felt from the last shell, he knew that this discovery would spring back upon him and his dear ones.