only the overture,' he cried. 'The opera
will soon begin. We must put a breastwork up in these gaps or they'll
pick us off from a thousand yards.'

I had meantime roughly dressed Blenkiron's wound with a linen rag which
Hussin provided. It was from a ricochet bullet which had chipped into
his left shin. Then I took a hand with the others in getting up
earthworks to complete the circuit of the defence. It was no easy job,
for we wrought only with our knives and had to dig deep down below the
snowy gravel. As we worked I took stock of our refuge.

The _castrol_ was a rough circle about ten yards in diameter, its
interior filled with boulders and loose stones, and its parapet about
four feet high. The mist had cleared for a considerable space, and I
could see the immediate surroundings. West, beyond the hollow, was the
road we had come, where now the remnants of the pursuit were clustered.
North, the hill fell steeply to the valley bottom, but to the south,
after a dip there was a ridge which shut the view. East lay another
fork of the stream, the chief fork I guessed, and it was evidently
followed by the main road to the pass, for I saw it crowded with
transport. The two roads seemed to converge somewhere farther south of
my sight.

I guessed we could not be very far from the front, for the noise of
guns sounded very near, both the sharp crack of the field-pieces, and
the deeper boom of the howitzers. More, I could hear the chatter of
the machine-guns, a magpie note among the baying of hounds. I even saw
the bursting of Russian shells, evidently trying to reach the main
road. One big fellow--an eight-inch--landed not ten yards from a
convoy to the east of us, and another in the hollow through which we
had come. These were clearly ranging shots, and I wondered if the
Russians had observation-posts on the heights to mark them. If so,
they might soon try a curtain, and we should be very near its edge. It
would be an odd irony if we were the target of friendly shells.

'By the Lord Harry,' I heard Sandy say, 'if we had a brace of
machine-guns we could hold this place against a division.'

'What price shells?' I asked. 'If they get a gun up they can blow us
to atoms in ten minutes.'

'Please God the Russians keep them too busy for that,' was his answer.

With anxious eyes I watched our enemies on the road. They seemed to
have grown in numbers. They were signalling, too, for a white flag
fluttered. T