"This 'ere bloke comes up just now," said the sentry, pointing the bayonet at my face. "'E began to ask me questions and I 'ad my suspicions, so I whistled."
"That's right," said one of the newcomers, rubbing a thoughtful hand over the bayonet which he carried; then he turned to me. "Come along wiv us," he said, and, escorted by the two soldiers, I made my way across the field towards a ruined building which was raked at intervals by the German artillery. The field, was peopled with soldiers lying flat on waterproof sheets, and many of the men were asleep. None had been there in the early part of the night.
An officer, an elderly man with a white moustache, sat under the shade of the building holding an electric lamp in one hand and writing in a notebook with the other. We came to a halt opposite him.
"What have you here?" he asked, looking at one of my captors.
"We found this man inquiring what regiment was here and if it had just come," said the soldier on my right who, by the stripes on his sleeve, I perceived was a corporal. "He aroused our suspicions and we took him prisoner."
"What is your name?" asked the officer, turning to me.
I told him. As I spoke a German shell whizzed over our heads and burst about three hundred yards to rear. The escort and the officer went flop to earth and lay there for the space of a second.
"You don't need to duck," I said. "That shell burst half a mile away."
"Is that so?" asked the officer, getting to his feet. "I thought it——Oh! what's your name?"
I told him my name the second time.