They showed a childlike curiosity to see the prisoners in the box cars behind us.  They grinned triumphantly at the Frenchmen and the Britishers, but the sight of a Turco in his short jacket and his dirty white skirts invariably set them off in derisive cat-calling and whooping.  One beefy cavalryman in his forties, who looked the Bavarian peasant all over, boarded our car to see what might be seen.  He had been drinking.  He came nearer being drunk outright than any German soldier I had seen to date.  Because he heard us talking English he insisted on regarding us as English spies.

“Hark! they betray themselves,” we heard him mutter thickly to one of his wounded countrymen in the next compartment.  “They are damned Englishers.”

“Nein!  Nein!  All Americans,” we heard the other say.

“Well, if they are Americans, why don’t they talk the American language then?” he demanded.  Hearing this, I was sorry I had neglected in my youth to learn Choctaw.

Still dubious of us, he came now and stood in the aisle, rocking slightly on his bolster legs and eying us glassily.  Eventually a thought pierced the fog of his understanding.  He hauled his saber out of its scabbard and invited us to run our fingers along the edge and see how keen and sharp it was.  He added, with appropriate gestures, that he had honed it with the particular intent of slicing off a few English heads.  For one, and speaking for one only, I may say I was, on the whole, rather glad when he departed from among us.

When we grew tired of watching the troop trains streaming south we fought the flies, and listened for perhaps the tenth time to the story of Stevens’ experience when he first fell into German hands, six days before.

Stevens was the young American who accompanied Gerbeaux, the Frenchman, and Hennebert, the Belgian, on their ill-timed expedition from Brussels in an automobile bearing without authority a Red Cross flag.  Gerbeaux was out to get a story for the Chicago paper which he served as Brussels correspondent, and the Belgian hoped to take some photographs; but a pure love of excitement brought Stevens along.  He had his passport to prove his citizenship and a pass from General von Jarotzky, military commandant of Brussels, authorizing him to pass through the lines.  He thought he was perfectly safe.

When their machine was halted by the Germans a short distance south and west of Waterloo, Stevens, for some reason which he could never understand, was separated from his two companions and the South-African negro chauffeur.  A sergeant took him in charge, and all the rest of the day he rode on the tail of a baggage wagon with a guard upon either side of him.  First, though, he was searched and all his papers were taken from him.