“He isn’t dead!”—­“Yes, he is dead; that’s the air.”

They shake him by the pockets; with hasty breathing the four black men stoop over their task.  “The helmet’s mine,” says Pepin.  “It was me that knifed him, I want the helmet.”

They tear from the body its pocket-book of still warm papers, its field-glass, purse, and leggings.

“Matches!” shouts Blaire, shaking a box, “he’s got some!”

“Ah, the fool that you are!” hisses Volpatte.

“Now let’s be off like hell.”  They pile the body in a corner and break into a run, prey to a sort of panic, and regardless of the row their disordered flight makes.

“It’s this way!—­This way!—­Hurry, lads—­for all you’re worth!”

Without speaking they dash across the maze of the strangely empty trench that seems to have no end.

“My wind’s gone,” says Blaire, “I’m—­” He staggers and stops.

“Come on, buck up, old chap,” gasps Pepin, hoarse and breathless.  He takes him by the sleeve and drags him forward like a stubborn shaft-horse.

’We’re right!” says Poupardin suddenly.  “Yes, I remember that tree.  It’s the Pylones road!”

“Ah!” wails Blaire, whose breathing is shaking him like an engine.  He throws himself forward with a last impulse—­and sits down on the ground.

“Halt!” cries a sentry—­“Good Lord!” he stammers as he sees the four poilus.  “Where the—­where are you coming from, that way?”

They laugh, jump about like puppets, full-blooded and streaming with perspiration, blacker than ever in the night.  The German officer’s helmet is gleaming in the hands of Pepin.  “Oh, Christ!” murmurs the sentry, with gaping mouth, “but what’s been up?”

An exuberant reaction excites and bewitches them.  All talk at once.  In haste and confusion they act again the drama which hardly yet they realize is over.  They had gone wrong when they left the sleepy sentry and had taken the International Trench, of which a part is ours and another part German.  Between the French and German sections there is no barricade or division.  There is merely a sort of neutral zone, at the two ends of which sentries watch ceaselessly.  No doubt the German watcher was not at his post, or likely he hid himself when he saw the four shadows, or perhaps be doubled back and had not time to bring up reinforcements.  Or perhaps, too, the German officer had strayed too far ahead in the neutral zone.  In short, one understands what happened without understanding it.

“The funny part of it,” says Pepin, “is that we knew all about that, and never thought to be careful about it when we set off.”

“We were looking for matches,” says Volpatte.

“And we’ve got some!” cries Pepin.  “You’ve not lost the flamers, old broomstick?”

“No damned fear!” says Blaire; “Boche matches are better stuff than ours.  Besides, they’re all we’ve got to light our fire!  Lose my box?  Let any one try to pinch it off me!”