en they came upon me, to
sit up into some sort of firing position. But my white face (and I'll
wager it was unwontedly white!) might show up in the dark. So I clawed
my fingers into the ground in the hope that I could apply some
camouflage in the form of mud. But mud is perverse; it lies yards deep
when you don't want it, and is miles away when you do. The ground was
wet enough from the rains--so was I, for that matter!--but with spongy,
dead leaves. I tried smearing some over the backs of my hands, but
when I extended one to get the effect it was as lily-white as milady's;
whereat I hastily tucked it back under my gas mask, worn at the "alert"
upon my chest.

The searchers, meantime, were snaking around among the bushes. Their
conversation was as audible as it was meaningless to me--now to my
left, next close up, then withdrawing to my right.

All this time the "li'l .45" was ready if they got so near that
discovery would be inevitable. I hadn't given up hope by any means,
but I did let myself picture several boches taking my maps and message
books (one of them full of carbon copies) into some dugout. Such odd
little thoughts as how long it would take them to find a boche who
could read English occurred to me. And from that I was whisked back to
a Forty-second Street barber whose English was excellent and who had
told me of his service in the German army. Many such reservists must
have returned to the Fatherland. I wondered, too, if, in the
anticipated exchange of shots, having wounded me, they would kill me
outright in reprisal for my killing their two comrades.

Oh, it was a cheerful line of speculation! I was deep in it when,
above the regular shots of the fellow in the funk hole nearest me, came
a rattle of pistol explosions some distance away. "One of the
runners," I thought. "Hope he was as lucky as I." Munson told me
later that he had run into a boche near a railway track and had dropped
him.

The chap in the near-by funk hole began to amuse me now. He kept up
his shots at fifteen-second intervals for half an hour. I'm inclined
to believe those Jerries were more frightened than we. May have
thought it was a surprise attack in force. This fellow, for instance,
was firing, I knew, at nothing in the world but atmosphere. And in his
own mind he may have been bumping off a lot of Yanks lying in wait for
the word to charge at his front--wherever in blazes his front was!

I got to feeling rath