“Yes, I know it,” said John, speaking without any trace of exultation, “and I’m willing to tell you that it was one of the results I saw from the aeroplane.  Can I ask what you intend to do with the prisoners you have here, including myself?”

“I do not know.  You are to sleep where you are tonight.  Your bed, the earth, will be as good as ours, and perhaps in the morning we’ll find an answer to your question.”

Von Arnheim bade him a pleasant good night and turned to duties elsewhere.  John watched him as he strode away, a fine, straight young figure.  He had found him a most likable man, and he was bound to admit that there was much in the German character to admire.  But for the present it was—­in his view—­a Germany misled.

The prisoners numbered perhaps six hundred, and at least half of them were wounded.  John soon learned that the hurt usually suffered in stoical silence.  It was so in the great American civil war, and it was true now in the great European war.

Rough food was brought to them by German guards, and those who were able drank at the brook.  Water was served to the severely wounded by their comrades in tin cups given to them by the Germans, and then all but a few lay on the grass and sought sleep.

John and his new friend, Fleury, were among those who yet sat up and listened to the sounds of battle still in progress, although it was far in the night.  It was an average night of late summer or early autumn, cool, fairly bright, and with but little wind.  But the dull, moaning sound made by the distant cannonade came from both sides of them, and the earth yet quivered, though but faintly.  Now and then, the searchlights gleamed against the background of darkness, but John felt that the combat must soon stop, at least until the next day.  The German army in which he was a prisoner had ceased already, but other German armies along the vast line fought on, failing day, by the light which man himself had devised.

Fleury was intelligent and educated.  Although it was bitter to him to be a prisoner at such a time, he had some comprehension of what had occurred, and he knew that John had been in a position to see far more than he.  He asked the young American many questions about his flight in the air, and about Philip Lannes, of whom he had heard.

“It was wonderful,” he said, “to look down on a battle a hundred miles long.”

“We didn’t see all of it,” said John, “but we saw it in many places, and we don’t know that it was a hundred miles long, but it must have been that or near it.”

“And the greatest day for France in her history!  What mighty calculations must have been made and what tremendous marchings and combats must have been carried out to achieve such a result.”

“One of the decisive battles of history, like Plataea, or the Metaurus or Gettysburg.  There go the Uhlans with Captain von Boehlen at their head.  Now I wonder what they mean to do!”