"Hands up!" Up went six hundred paws, and three hundred hoarse voices chorused "Kamerads! Kamerads!"
Ripping! I could have yelled with joy at the sight and shouted "Bravo!" But not a sound escaped my lips. Instead I folded my arms and remained motionless, looking very fierce, I dare say.
Wouldn't there have been a hullabaloo if somebody had guessed what thoughts were passing through the poor brain inside that stern figure?
IV—A DARING RUSE—AND SURRENDER
Presently, seven officers stepped out, marched up, fell in behind my prisoner, and extended the hilts of their swords to me. "Keep 'em," I ordered, dryly; "you'll give 'em to my C.O. Now let's move off, and be sharp!"
"May I beg leave to tell my men they will not be shot?" the Captain asked.
"Very well," I told him; "but don't be long about it."
He went towards his docile crowd and gave them the welcome assurance. Evidently they had been taught that the French give no quarter. I wished he would make a speech, for the whole point for me was to gain time so that supports might arrive. Back he came, and I was in a sweat with the perspiration oozing from my temples. When was he going to see that there were only four men, one N.C.O., and my anxious self on the premises?
Having placed my quartette of Chasseurs and the sergeant on guard at the ward end of the archway, so as to prevent any of the rats in the trap peeping out, I went with a thumping heart to the outer door and took a glance up the road. Hurrah! My platoon had crept up along the ditches. "Up with you!" I shouted, and, screening myself round the corner of the gateway, added, in a lower tone, "Do not look surprised." Then, aloud, I yelled: "Prisoners' escort! About-turn!"
It would never do to give the German officers a chance of realizing how enormously their men outnumbered mine, so I quickly returned to where the Hauptmann and his subalterns stood in a disconsolate group.