A partridge thundered up at our feet and rocketed to earth again beyond the protecting pines. In a little glade we surprised four young rabbits together at breakfast. The Baas laid his hand lightly on my arm. "It is sad, monsieur, isn't it?" he said. "The poachers steal right and left nowadays. The gardes champêtres are no longer armed, so the thieves do as they will. There is more pheasant in the city markets than chicken, and more rabbit than veal. The game will soon be gone, like our horses and cattle.
"You remember, monsieur, the sand dunes by Blankenberghe and Knocke on the Belgian coast? Ah, the rabbits that used to be in those dunes! But now the firing of cannon has driven them all away."
A silence fell upon us both. The thickets grew denser, and we pushed our way slowly toward the deeper coverts. I found myself thinking of the little crosses along the seaside dunes which marked where greater game than rabbits had fallen—the graves of men—the biggest game on earth—the shallow pits and the frail wooden crosses, like that which the Baas's leather boot had crushed a half hour before.
II—"WE FOUND A STARVING GERMAN"
We had reached the deepest woods, when a gasping, choking cry stopped us short. The thicket directly before us stirred and then lay still as death. The cry had been horrible as a Banshee's wail, and as mysterious, but it was not the cry of an animal; it was human, and it came from a human being in agony. The Baas crossed himself swiftly and leaped forward, and instantly we had parted the protecting bushes and were looking down on a man lying flat on the ground—a spectre with a thin white face, chattering teeth, enormous frightened eyes, and a filthy, much worn German uniform.
"What are you doing here?" I demanded.
The soldier did not answer, he did not rise, he lay motionless and hideous like a beast. Then I caught sight of his left ankle, enormously swollen and wrapped in rags, and his hands—they were thin as sticks. The man was helpless, and he was starving.
And now came a strange thing. We two walked slowly around the man on the ground as if he were a wild creature caught in a snare. We felt no pity or astonishment; only curiosity. Utterly unemotionally we took note of him and his surroundings. He had no gun, no knife, and no blankets. He lay on some broken boughs, and he seemed to have covered himself with boughs at night. The wild, haggard eyes turned in their sockets and watched us as we moved, but otherwise no part of the man stirred. He seemed transfixed, frozen in an agony of fear and horror.
"Ashes! He has had a fire here, monsieur, but it was days ago." At the man's feet the Baas had discovered the remnants of a little fire. "Holy blue!" he added in astonishment, "he has eaten these!"