“Sweating all over he eased the map out of his pocket and slowly and silently commenced to eat it.

“You know what those things are like.  A yard square of tough paper backed by indestructible calico—­one might as well try to devour a child’s rag book.

“Anyhow that’s what de Blavincourt did.  He ate it, and it took him forty hours to do the trick.  For forty hours day and night he squatted under that table, with the Huns sitting upon and around it, and gnawed away at that square yard of calico.

“Just before the dawn of the third day he gulped the last corner down and peeped out under the tablecloth.  The Bosch on guard was oiling the lock of the machine-gun.  Two more he could hear in the kitchen clattering pots about.  The remaining four were asleep, grotesquely sprawled over sofas and chairs.

“De Blavincourt determined to chance it.  He could not stop under the table for ever, and even at the worst that map, that precious map, was out of harm’s way.  He crept stealthily from his hiding-place, dealt the kneeling Bosch a terrific kick in the small of the back, dived headlong out of the window and galloped down the street towards our Lewis gunners, squealing, ’_ Friend!  Ros’bif!  Not’arf!’_—­which, in spite of his three years of interpreting, was all the English he could muster at the moment.  The Huns emptied their automatics after him, but only one bullet found the target, and that an outer.

“’I weesh it vos t’rough my ‘eart,’ he told me later, tears rolling down his cheeks.  ’Vot more use to me my life, hein?  My stomach she is for ever ruin.’”

The General laughed.  “Stout fellow for a’ that.”

“I grant you,” said the Brigadier, “but a fellow should be stout along accepted lines.  ’To Lieutenant Felix Marcel, Comte de Blavincourt, the Military Cross for eating his map.’  No, Sir, it can’t be done.”

The Horse-master, who was helping himself to old tawny, nodded vigorously and muttered “No, by Jove, it can’t.”

“You speak with feeling, Coper,” remarked the General.

“I do, Sir.  I sat up the best part of three nights last March trying to write for official consumption the story of a fellow who seemed to me to qualify for the ‘Stout’ class.  It was a wash-out, though; too absurd.”

“Well, give the port a fair wind and let’s have the absurdity now,” said the General.

The Horse-master bowed to the command.

“I was with the Fifth Army last year when the wave swept us.  We were fairly swamped for the moment and all nohow.  One evening, retreating on my own line, I came upon some little village—­can’t remember the name just now, but you know the sort of thing—­typical Somme hamlet, a smear of brick-dust with a big notice-board on top, saying, ’THIS IS LE SARS,’ or ‘POZIERES,’ or whatever its name was.  Anyway, in this village I found a Divisional H.Q., four Brigade H.Q.’s, and oddities of all sorts sitting one on top of t’other