"It's a man, sure!" Bob whispered, "and he's crawling toward us on his
stomach."

"Let's do the same ourselves and crawl out to meet him," suggested
Jimmy. "If he has a grenade, or a bomb, and tries to throw it, we may
forestall him."

"Our orders were to stay here," decided Bob, and he was a great
stickler for obeying orders to the letter. Perhaps even his small
newspaper experience was responsible for this.

Suddenly the silence of the darkness was broken by an unmistakable
sneeze. True, the sneezer, if I may use such a term, tried to stifle
the explosion, but he was not altogether successful. It was a sneeze,
and nothing could disguise it.

"Did you hear--" began Bob.

And then, to the greater surprise of the two listeners, there came a
muttered exclamation in _German_.

"For the love of gas masks!" breathed Jimmy. "Take aim, Bob!"

And in another moment the fire of two rifles would have been
concentrated on that moving splotch of blackness, whence had come the
sneeze, except that the guttural German expletive was followed by a
tense whisper. And the words came in good English.

"Don't shoot, boys! I'm Schnitz!"