One of them spoke:
"A bloody Hun prison, that's us! My Gawd! Where are we?"
Another answered caustically:
"Monsieur, we are lost—and very tired."
A third man laughed. The laugh was short.
"A Frenchman! Where in hell did you come from?"
"Where you and the rest of us came from." The Frenchman's voice was polished; his English faultless. "We come from the tickling of the German bayonets."
The first man elaborated the statement gratuitously:
"I don't know about you 'uns; but our crowd was done in good and proper two days ago. Gawd! ain't there no end to 'em? Millions! And us running! What I says is let 'em have the blinking channel ports, and lets us clear out. I wasn't noways in favour of mussing up in this when the bleeding parliament says up and at 'em in the beginning, leastways nothing except the navy."
"Drafted, I take it?" observed the third man coolly.