Germans in rifle pits saw the figure coming their way, and several officers examined it critically with their glasses. All pronounced the stranger obviously a peasant, and they were equally sure that he could do them no harm. He was coming straight toward their pits and so they awaited him with some curiosity.
John presently caught the shimmer of sun on bayonets, and he knew now that he would soon reach the German earthworks. His first care after Delaunois left him, had been to destroy the passport that General Vaugirard had given him and there was not a scratch of writing about him to identify him as John Scott.
Whistling louder than ever, and looking vacant of countenance, he walked boldly toward the first rifle pit, and, when the sharp hail of the German sentry came, he promptly threw up his hands. An officer whom he took to be a lieutenant and four or five men came toward him. All wore heavy gray overcoats and they were really boys rather than men; not one of them, including the officers, seeming to be more than twenty. But they were large and muscular, heavily tanned by wind and snow and rain.
John had learned to read character, and as he walked carelessly toward them he nevertheless watched them keenly. And so watching he judged that they were honest youths, ready to like or hate, according to orders from the men higher up, but by nature simple and direct. He did not feel any fear of them.
"Halt!" said the officer, whom John judged to be a Saxon—he had seen his kind in Dresden and Leipsic.
John stopped obediently, and raised his hand in a clumsy military fashion, standing there while they looked him over.
"Now you can come forward, still with your hands up," said the officer, though not in any fierce manner, "and tell us who you are."
John advanced, and they quickly searched him, finding no weapon.
"You can take your hands down," said the officer. "Unarmed, I don't believe you'd be a match for our rifles. Now, who are you?"
"Jean Castel, sir, of Lorraine," replied John in German with a strong French accent.