Leaning beside her the airman quietly explained the plan they were to follow.
"With dawn they will come creeping into[pg 244] Nivelle—the Huns," he said. "I have one of their officers' uniforms in that bundle above. I shall try to pass as a general officer. You see, I speak German. My education was partly ruined in Germany. So I'll get on very well, I expect.
"And directly under us is the trench and the main redoubt. They'll occupy that first thing. They'll swarm there—the whole trench will be crawling with them. They'll install their gas cylinders at once, this wind being their wind.
"But with sunrise the wind changes—and whether it changes or not, I don't care," he added. "I've got them at last where I want them."
The girl looked up at him. He smiled that terrifying smile of his:
"With the explosion of my first bomb among their gas cylinders you are to start these bells above us. Are you afraid?"
"No."
"You are to play 'La Brabançonne.' That is the signal to our trenches."
"I have often played it," she said coolly.[pg 245]
"Not in the teeth of a barbarian army. Not in the faces of a murderous soldiery."