Out we raced towards the broad Tiber, towards it we crept through fog
across the meadow. Again we were challenged. The cordon was, apparently,
complete.

As we regained the camp Agathemer said:

"If we are to escape alive we need all our craft, and we must be quick."

We sprinted, not to our quarters, but to those of the British veterans.
Into each tent we peered.

Every tent was empty!

Agathemer, plainly, felt in a desperate hurry, yet he took time to glance
into the most of the hundred and fifty tents, tearing along past the lines
of them. He also took time, after our brief inspection was finished, to
pause, get his breath and say:

"This looks worse than bad. I miss my guess if many of these slumberers
wake alive. Strip!"

We stripped of everything except our amulet bags.

Then, at full run, stark naked, our unsheathed sheath-knives in our hands,
we raced through the fog, now glimmering with the first forehint of coming
dawn, along the inner edge of the veterans' tents, till we were opposite
the quarters of the tumultuary century formed from the outpourings of the
_ergastulum_, at Nuceria.

Into one of the veterans' tents we went.

"Knife in teeth!" said Agathemer.

The tents were lavishly provided with unsoldierly comforts, a double
allowance of blankets and mattresses stuffed with dried reeds or sedge.
Motioning me to help, Agathemer doubled a mattress and pressed on it till
it lay so. Then he doubled another and set it so that the two were about a
yard apart, with their folds towards each other. Another pair he set
similarly so that the interval between the folds was over two yards long.
Then we roofed the interval, so to speak, with two mattresses laid flat,
and laid two more on each of these. Not yet satisfied Agathemer led me out
four times to drag in, from the near-by tents, mattresses, two of which we
laid lengthwise over the triple mattress-roof, the others we heaped over
the end of the roofed tunnel furthest from the opening of the tent.

Then we went outside yet again and cut the ropes of the two adjacent tents
and of the one above the pile of mattresses. We threw our knives far away
and bunched up the collapsed canvas of that tent so that it formed a sort
of continuation of the mattress-roofed tunnel. Then we crawled, feet
first, into the tunnel, taking with us two full water-bottles which
Agathemer had found in one of the tents and a quarter loaf of bread, left
over from the banquet. I