"Gott!" murmured Kurt, taking the glasses Bert restored to him--
"Gott! Da waren Albrecht--der gute Albrecht und der alte
Zimmermann--und von Rosen!"

Long after the Barbarosa had been swallowed up in the twilight
and distance he remained on the gallery peering through his
glasses, and when he came back to his cabin he was unusually
silent and thoughtful.

"This is a rough game, Smallways," he said at last--"this war is
a rough game. Somehow one sees it different after a thing like
that. Many men there were worked to make that Barbarossa, and
there were men in it--one does not meet the like of them every
day. Albrecht--there was a man named Albrecht--played the zither
and improvised; I keep on wondering what has happened to him. He
and I--we were very close friends, after the German fashion."

Smallways woke--the next night to discover the cabin in darkness,
a draught blowing through it, and Kurt talking to himself in
German. He could see him dimly by the window, which he had
unscrewed and opened, peering down. That cold, clear, attenuated
light which is not so much light as a going of darkness, which
casts inky shadows and so often heralds the dawn in the high air,
was on his face.

"What's the row?" said Bert.

"Shut up!" said the lieutenant. "Can't you hear?"

Into the stillness came the repeated heavy thud of guns, one,