e side of it.

"Stand clear!" he yelled, waving with his arm, and vanished again.

"Who is that?" inquired Rabot. "He looks English and speaks French like
Monsieur le President."

"You will hear him speak German out of that gun in a moment," laughed
the corporal. "_Voila!_ there she goes. And to think we were going to
shoot that boy less than an hour ago!"

Dennis, who had qualified as a machine-gun officer, had indeed lighted
upon a piece of great good fortune, for under the gun he found three
Germans recently bayoneted and the cartridge-jacket in position. He had
only to depress the muzzle to send a stream of bullets straight into the
mouth of the dug-out.

The stream ceased in a moment, and they saw him beckoning to them.

"Look yonder!" he cried, as the corporal and Rabot joined him. "The
rabbits will not bolt again if we can leave someone here, but the
company is in difficulties, and we are wanted. Can you take charge, _mon
garcon_? See, the mechanism is quite simple; it works like this," and he
loosed half a dozen rounds by way of illustration.

"Stay here and do as the lieutenant has shown you if they show their
noses again," said the corporal, and Rabot took his post at the
machine-gun.

The French soldier is intelligent because he has imagination, and Rabot
understood. Corporal Puzzeau understood also, and his eyes danced as
Dennis bounded along the top of the parados towards the retreating
company.

They were bunched up in the trench, and some of them were even
scrambling out over the other side, when that slim brown figure in the
uniform of their British Allies with one of their own helmets on his
head, and the corporal behind him, appeared above them.

"Comrades of the 400th of the Line!" cried Dennis. "You are surely not
going back to Paris? Berlin lies in this direction. Follow me, and I
will show you the way."

"_Vive la patrie!_" bellowed Corporal Puzzeau, and the men who had
recoiled, took up the shout and scaled the wall of the parados again.

A furious rat-tat-tat sounded a little way off, and Dennis heard Puzzeau
laugh.

"It is only Rabot," he said. "He has learnt the trick already."

In a few minutes the ground behind the German trench was strewn with
bodies in field grey, and it was with some difficulty that Dennis and
the corporal could check the victorious company from penetrating into
the zone of their own artillery barrage fire. As it was, a good many of
the helmets were dente