“Ach!” he responded in English. “You gets avay?”

“Yes.”

He allowed Gordon to finish dressing my wound, and after taking a look at it himself, said, when he saw that Gordon had some clean bandages, “Verbande” and coolly took most of them, with the grim remark: “May need these myself.”

From this I inferred that linen bandages were scarce with them.

Then came the order: “Vorwart!” and we were hurried forward to their headquarters, where we were halted and turned over to a new guard.

For a while but little attention was given us, and we were allowed to lie down while awaiting—we knew not what.

“It is rather disheartening,” I said, “to be gobbled when we were so close to our lines.”

“Yes,” replied Gordon coolly, “but that was the place where we were most likely to get caught. Don’t look so glum; never say die, chum, until you are dead, and then—you can’t.”

“They will be marching us to prison soon, I suppose,” I said.

“Very likely,” replied Gordon; “but I will do my best to vote in the negative, as we used to say in our debating club.”