"How are you going to keep from it?"
"I'll get myself shot first. No, I won't! I'll see that they don't have a chance for any such triumph! I and a million others."
"I feel like despairing myself sometimes," said John gravely, "and then I say to myself: 'what's the use!' I don't mean to give up, even when the Germans are in Paris."
"Well spoken," said Wharton, who was lying on his back in the grass. "All is not lost yet by a long shot. When our army drew out of their clutches their first great stroke failed. Who knows what will happen to their second?"
They were still on the extreme left of the Allied line, forming a sort of loose fringe there, but their comrades on the right were only a few hundred yards away. They heard in front the scattered firing of the pickets and skirmishers which continued day and night, while the searchlights of the pursuers winked and winked, and, at far intervals, a mighty shell crashed somewhere near.
There was a pause in the retreat and John also lay down on the grass. At first he was flat on his back, and then he turned over on his side. His ear touched the earth, and he heard a sound that made him spring to his feet in alarm.
"Horses!" he cried. "It must be the Uhlans!"
They saw lances gleaming through the dusk, and then with a rush and a shout the Uhlans were upon them.
John sprang to one side, dodging the sweep of a sabre, and firing his rifle at the man who wielded it. He did not have time to see whether or not he fell, because the little camp, in an instant, was the scene of terrible turmoil and confusion, a wild medley of shouting men and rearing horses. Instinctively he rushed to one side, dodging the thrust of a lance, receiving a blow from the butt of another on his head, but finally coming clear of the tumult.
The lance blow had made him see stars, and he could not think or see clearly now. He had dropped his rifle, but he remembered his automatic, and drawing it he began to fire into the mass of horses and horsemen. Then a lancer rode at him with poised weapon. He fired at him, leaped aside and ran through some bushes, intending to come around on the other flank.