and powerless to assist their men; had the German staff driven the vanquished army out there in the mud and rain with the intention of letting them starve to death?  Not the first step seemed to have been taken, not an effort had been made, to provide for the subsistence of those eighty thousand men in that hell on earth that the soldiers subsequently christened Camp Misery, a name that the bravest of them could never hear mentioned in later days without a shudder.

On his return from his wearisome and fruitless expedition to the shed, Jean forgot his usual placidity and gave way to anger.

“What do they mean by calling us up when there’s nothing for us?  I’ll be hanged if I’ll put myself out for them another time!”

And yet, whenever there was a call, he hurried off again.  It was inhuman to sound the bugles thus, merely because regulations prescribed certain calls at certain hours, and it had another effect that was near breaking Maurice’s heart.  Every time that the trumpets sounded the French horses, that were running free on the other side of the canal, came rushing up and dashed into the water to rejoin their squadron, as excited at the well-known sound as they would be at the touch of the spur; but in their exhausted condition they were swept away by the current and few attained the shore.  It was a cruel sight to see their struggles; they were drowned in great numbers, and their bodies, decomposing and swelling in the hot sunshine, drifted on the bosom of the canal.  As for those of them that got to land, they seemed as if stricken with sudden madness, galloping wildly off and hiding among the waste places of the peninsula.

“More bones for the crows to pick!” sorrowfully said Maurice, remembering the great droves of horses that he had encountered on a previous occasion.  “If we remain here a few days we shall all be devouring one another.  Poor brutes!”

The night between Tuesday and Wednesday was most terrible of all, and Jean, who was beginning to feel seriously alarmed for Maurice’s feverish state, made him wrap himself in an old blanket that they had purchased from a zouave for ten francs, while he, with no protection save his water-soaked capote, cheerfully took the drenching of the deluge which that night pelted down without cessation.  Their position under the poplars had become untenable; it was a streaming river of mud, the water rested in deep puddles on the surface of the saturated ground.  What was worst of all was that they had to suffer on an empty stomach, the evening meal of the six men having consisted of two beets which they had been compelled to eat raw, having no dry wood to make a fire with, and the sweet taste and refreshing coolness of the vegetables had quickly been succeeded by an intolerable burning sensation.  Some cases of dysentery had appeared among the men, caused by fatigue, improper food and the persistent humidity of the atmosphere.  More than ten times