"Tell me," he asked one of the men who had just joined their ranks, and who was gasping for breath near him, "what has happened?"
"What has happened? Ah! They have driven our folks back from the fort, which is now isolated. We were holding on—I and perhaps a hundred of my comrades—near the eastern end, and then the Germans, having blasted the corner of the fort to pieces with that last shot, charged from some trenches in which they were lying, within a hundred metres perhaps, and burst their way into the place. We could not hold on any longer. It was a case of flight, or death, or capture."
"And so you chose flight! Good!" said Henri. "We chose the same. Here we are, snug in this place, with plenty of ammunition, and ready and eager to continue fighting. If any of you men understand a machine-gun, get to the one we have, at once, and man it; the rest, who have no rifles, can assist in any way that appeals to them. Ah! Watch those fellows. They are streaming into the hall. There are fifty—more—perhaps a hundred of them."
There were indeed considerably more of the Brandenburgers to be seen when the dust from that shattered wall had subsided. They came streaming in to the darkened hall, dishevelled, their Pickelhaubes gone in many cases, their rifles missing, their grey clothing now a mass of caked mud, and their hands and faces of the same colour. Shouting and bellowing their triumph, they massed in the room till an officer made himself apparent.
"Those men? Those Frenchmen who passed before us?" he asked in the arrogant manner of the Prussian; "you killed them—eh?"
"No! They went on ahead of us, up those stairs yonder," one of the men answered.
"Then no doubt they are cut off, like rats in a trap. Go in and kill them."
Henri turned and whispered to his friends.
"You heard that?" he asked them. "But perhaps you do not speak German. Then I will translate; they say they have us here like rats in a trap, and the order has been passed to come and kill us. Well, personally, I have a great objection to being killed, and I have every wish indeed to kill our enemies. Get ready! Load! Two hundred Germans shan't turn us out of these quarters."