you get me?"

"We get you," they nodded. "It's a wonderful scheme." And Rosenlaube
added in his most impressive literary manner: "Plato, it _must_
be so, thou reasonest well."

"But tell me," said the lieutenant, "what were you fellows chattering
about so loud when I came down?"

So they told him, and, according to the habit of college boys,
they skirmished over the ground of debate again, and Barker Bunn
vigorously supported the majority opinion, and Mitchell was left
in a hopeless minority of one, clinging obstinately to his faith
that there had been, and still might be, some use for the German
language.

Midnight came, and with it the return of the lieutenant's official
manner. He saw the trio slide over the top, one by one, vanishing
in the starless dark. "Good luck going and coming," he whispered;
and it sounded almost like an unofficial prayer.

In single file they crept through the prepared opening in the
barbed-wire entanglement, and so out into No Man's Land, where they
took up their spike-team formation. Phipps-Herrick was the leader,
the other men were the wheelers. They had agreed on a code of
silent signals: One kick with the heel or one pinch with the hand
meant "stop"; two meant "back"; three meant "get together." They
carried no rifles, because the rifle is an awkward tool for a
noiseless crawler to lug. But each man had a big trench-knife and
a pair of automatic pistols, with plenty of ammunition.