"Pierre!" he called again; and at the same instant an Uhlan struck him with his lance-butt across the temples.
* * * * * How long it was before he opened his eyes he could not tell. He found himself lying on the ground in a meadow surrounded by trees. A camp-fire flickered near, lighting the gray side of the little stone house where the balloon was kept.
There were sounds--deep, guttural voices raised in dispute or threats; he saw a group of shadowy men, swaying, pushing, crowding under the trees. The firelight glimmered on a gilt button here and there, on a sabre-hilt, on polished schapskas and gold-scaled chin-guards. The knot of struggling figures suddenly widened out into a half-circle, then came a quick command, a cry in French--"Ah! God!"--and something shot up into the air and hung from a tree, dangling, full in the firelight.
It was the writhing body of a man.
Jack turned his head away, then covered his eyes with his hands. Beside him a tall Uhlan, swathed to the eyes in his great-coat, leaned on a lance and smoked in silence.
Suddenly a voice broke out in the night: "Links! vorwärts!" There came a regular tramp of feet--one, two! one, two!--across the grass, past the fire, and straight to where Jack sat, his face in his arms.
The bright glare of lanterns dazzled him as he looked up, but he saw a line of men with bared sabres standing to his right--tall Uhlans, buttoned to the chin in their sombre overcoats, helmet-cords oscillating in the lantern glow.
Another Uhlan, standing erect before him, had been speaking for a second or two before he even heard him.
"Prisoner, do you understand German?" repeated the Uhlan, harshly.
"Yes," muttered Jack. He began to shiver, perhaps from the chill of the wet earth.
"Stand up!"
Jack stumbled to his numbed feet. A drop of blood rolled into his eye and he mechanically wiped it away. He tried to look at the man before him; he could not, for his fascinated eyes returned to that thing that hung on a rope from the great sprawling oak-branch at the edge of the grove.
Like a vague voice in a dream he heard his own name pronounced; he heard a sonorous formula repeated in a heavy, dispassionate voice--"accused of having resisted a picquet of his Prussian Majesty's 11th Regiment of Uhlan cavalry, of having wilfully, maliciously, and with murderous design fired upon and wounded trooper Kohlmann of said picquet while in pursuit of his duty."
Again he heard the same voice: "The law of non-combatants operating in such cases leaves no doubt as to the just penalty due."