“Say, those are ours, you Dutch thief!  Let ’em alone!  We came here to get ’em!  Let ’em alone!”

The German captain gave a sharp order, and Charlie was forcibly pulled back by one of the soldiers.

“Say, but look here!” exclaimed the lanky assistant of the moving picture boys.  “This isn’t war.  I mean we aren’t fighting you Germans—­though we might if we had the chance.  We’re just taking pictures, and these fellows have stolen our films,” and he indicated Secor and Labenstein.  The latter made some reply in German to the captain which the boys could not understand.

“Give us back our films and let us go!” demanded Macaroni.  “We only came to get them!”

“Enough of this!” broke in the captain.  “You are our prisoners, and you may be thankful you are alive,” and he tapped his big automatic pistol significantly.  “March!” he ordered.

Labenstein and Secor picked up the boxes of exposed film containing the army views and went out of the hut followed by some of the soldiers.  Then the moving picture boys were told to follow, a guard of Germans, with ready bayonets, closing up the rear.  A little later the boys, prisoners in the midst of the raiding party, were out under the silent stars.  For the time peace had settled over the battlefield, extending across the trenches on both sides.

“I wonder what they are going to do with us,” said Joe, in a low voice, to Blake.

“Hard to tell,” was the quiet answer.  “They’re marching us toward their lines, though.”

This was indeed true, the advance being toward a section of the field beyond the German trenches whence, not long before, had come the searchlights and the hail of shrapnel.

“Well, things didn’t exactly turn out the way we expected,” said Charlie.  “I guess we’ll have to make a re-take in getting back our films,” he added, with grim humor.  “How do you figure it out, Blake?”

The talk of the boys was not rebuked by their German captors, and indeed the captain seemed to be deep in some conversation with Secor and Labenstein.

“I don’t know how it happened,” Blake answered, “unless they saw us go into that hut and crept up on us.”

“They crept up, all right,” muttered Joe.  “I never heard a sound until they called on us to surrender,” he added.

“Maybe Secor and Labenstein saw us and never let on, and then sent a signal telling the others to come and get us,” suggested Charlie.

“I hardly think that,” replied Blake.  “The Frenchman and his fellow German plotter seemed to be as much surprised as we were.  You could see that.”

“I guess you’re right,” admitted Joe.  “But what does it all mean, anyhow?”

“Well, as nearly as I can figure it out,” responded Blake, as he and his chums marched onward in the darkness, “Secor and Labenstein must have hidden the films in the hut after they stole them from the place where we went down under the gas attack.  For some reason they did not at once turn them over to the German command.”