"Bah!" He felt that old nausea, and felt horribly giddy, and was forced to stretch his hands forward and lean upon them to support his weight, while everything went round and round, and, strangely enough, instead of darkness surrounding him, a thousand flashes appeared before his eyes. Jules coughed. With all his light-heartedness he was an observant and wonderfully sympathetic fellow, particularly where Henri was concerned, and now had double reason for showing him attention. Putting his arm round Henri's waist, he supported him for a while.
"Pull yourself together, Henri," he said, "for we've got to go on in a little while and trap that beggar. What's he up to? Some dirty game, you may be sure. For he's a German, don't forget, and don't forget, either, what Stuart would have said——"
"Stuart!" gurgled Henri, trying to laugh. "That good fellow! Stuart?"
"A splendid beggar!" agreed Jules. "He'd have said, bluntly enough, that every German was a dirty beggar, wouldn't he?"
Henri chortled. Somehow or other Jules had a wonderful way of stirring up his old friend, of "bucking him up", to use a slang expression; and now, just the mention of the gallant Stuart, that very breezy, hefty Englishman, fixed Henri's wandering thoughts for a moment on a far more pleasant subject, and seemed to help to steady his reeling brain, and first set him giggling and then laughing merrily.
"You'll think I'm an old woman," he told Jules at last, shaking himself like a dog.
"Indeed! Like an old woman? Well, now, old women don't usually fight terrific combats at the top of a stone stairway, and finally tumble headlong down that same stairway locked in the arms of a German. Polite old women don't do their utmost to strangle the subjects of the Kaiser; now do they, Henri? And, besides—of course this is only a very small matter—such old women as you have mentioned don't, when they've got a chance to escape the notice of such sinister gentlemen as we have been associating with lately—I mean that Max beggar and his Brandenburg fellows, who would shoot a helpless prisoner—such old bodies don't as a rule, mind you, get hold of a bomb and sling it amongst them.
"It was fine—fine!" Jules told his chum, stretching out a hand and gripping Henri's energetically.
"Oh, rot!" Henri contrived to stutter. He was getting quite indignant now. "What utter nonsense you are talking! As if any old woman would fight a German!"
"Just so! That's why I retorted when you asked me if, or rather suggested that, I thought that you were one."