weep of
beach below me and far out to sea. Thus I lay in wait for the smuggling
crew to arrive--to be blazed at and perhaps captured.

What if they outnumber us? We might all perish then, with no hope of
quarter from these men whom we were lying in wait for like snakes in the
grass. One thing, however, I was firmly resolved upon, and that was to
shoot safely over anything that lay in range except in case of
self-defence. I was never of a murderous disposition, and the thought of
another's blood on my hands sent a fresh shiver along my prostrate
spine. Then again the comic-opera side of it struck me. I began to feel
more like an extra super in a one-night stand than a real soldier. What,
after all, if the smugglers failed us?

I was pondering upon the dangerous effect upon the brigadier of so
serious a stage wait, when Pierre crawled over to me from his ambush ten
metres from my own, to leave me my ration of bread and wine. He was so
excited by this time that his voice trembled in my ear.

"Gaston, my comrade, the fifth down the line," he whispered, "has just
seen two men prowling on the marsh; they are, without doubt,
accomplices. Gaston has gone to tell the brigadier." He ran his hand
carefully along the barrel of my carbine. "Monsieur must hold high," he
explained in another whisper, "since monsieur is unaccustomed to the gun
of war. It is this little machine here that does the trick." He bent his
eyes close to the hind sight and screwed it up to its notch at one
hundred and fifty metres.

I nodded my thanks, and he left me to my bread and wine and crept
cautiously back to his ambush.

* * * * *

A black night was rapidly settling. Above me in the great unfathomable
vault of sky not a star glimmered. Under the gloom of the approaching
darkness the vast expanse of marsh to my left lay silent, desolate, and
indistinct, save for its low edge of undulating sand dunes. Only the
beach directly before me showed plainly, seemingly illumined by the
breakers, that gleamed white like the bared teeth of a fighting line of
wolves.

It was a sullen, cheerless sea, from which the air blew over me damp and
raw; the only light visible being the intermittent flash from the
distant lighthouse on Les Trois Loups, beyond the marsh.

One hour passed--two hours--during which I saw nothing alive and moving
save a hare foraging timidly on the beach for his own rations. After a
while he hopped back to h