Phil hastened to the entrance of the building, which opened onto a small pillared portico at the head of half a dozen steps. There was a stout bar across the door holding it firmly in place, and this he lifted away and found that there was no further obstacle to his entering.
It was so dark inside that he could not, at first, see his hand before him. So he closed the door and called out:
“Hello.”
A few moments’ silence followed this greeting; then an echoing response came from a point several feet away:
“Hello.”
“We’ve made prisoners of all the guards around this building and the others are all dead drunk waiting for us to walk in and take their guns,” Phil announced. “There’s a plot on foot to wipe us all out tomorrow by dropping bombs on us from an aeroplane. Some of us overheard the plot. Three of us have handled the job thus far, but we want to play safe. So if a dozen of you fellows will come along we’ll soon make it impossible for those villains to carry out their dastardly plot.”
As this speech was delivered in English, it was not understood by the French prisoners, and only Americans responded to the call. But before they filed out through the entrance, Phil addressed to the other Americans a request that they remain quietly in the building until notified that the coast was clear, and delegated to several of his compatriots who could speak French the task of explaining the situation to their companion poilus in prison.
Outside, three men were left in charge of the two boche prisoners who had not yielded quite all their senses to intoxication. Then the rest of the party proceeded to the inn where the “bunch of off-duty convivials” seemed to have transferred their interest in the outcome of the war into several casks of “concentrated thirst.” They were lying in all attitudes and aspects of alcoholic abandon. Evidently the last man who had taken a drink was so lost to everything but his last swallow that, after filling the tin cup which all appeared to have used for tipping the fiery liquid into their stomachs, left the cock open and the rest of the liquid in the cask ran out over the floor.
After the soldiers’ guns had been secured and passed around among the men, Evans, who was possessed of a rather ghastly sense of humor, remarked:
“Fellows, I’ve got a scheme for putting these beastly boches into a state of mind and body that will render them harmless so far as we are concerned for a day of two. They’ve drunk all they can pour into themselves; I propose to finish the job by waking them up and filling them full to the guards.”