"It's five o'clock, sir."
It was the soldier of the party whom I had told off to wake us without fail.
"We've half an hour before the attack," said Vignerte. "Let's go out. I'll finish my story outside. I'm very near the end."
The stars had all vanished. One alone still twinkled low down in the Eastern sky, waiting for daybreak to blot it out.
We sat down on a ledge projecting from the side of a ravine. It commanded an excellent view of the line held by our Company, and we couldn't have had a better position to follow the course of the coming raid.
Close by us a soldier's lowly grave, a shadowy rectangle of dead branches. On the little wooden cross I could read these words, already almost obliterated by rain:
"Mohammed Beggi ben Smaël, Private, 2nd Tirailleurs. He died for France, September 23rd, 1914. Pray for him."
I have seldom seen anything more moving than that little cross pleading for a Christian prayer for the humble Mussulman soldier.
Vignerte, looking straight in front of him, was waiting for the moment when the growing light would reveal the lie of the land. But that hour was not yet come. Only the dark line of the heights occupied by the enemy could be distinguished on the horizon.
OVER there is Hurtebise and Craonne, he said, and beyond it Laon, Saint Richaumont and Goise. Farther still is La Capelle and the forest of Nouvion, where we charged the White Cuirassiers. How often do my thoughts fly over them to the sandy plains of Hanover and Lautenburg where I have left Aurora? What is she doing in her room among her rugs and her jewels? What have they done to her, my God!