John and Fleury walked side by side. They were near the same age. Fleury was an Alpinist from the high mountain region of Savoy and he had arrived so recently in the main theater of conflict that he knew little of what had been passing. He and John talked in whispers and they spoke encouraging words to each other. Fleury listened in wonder to John's account of his flights with Lannes.
"It is marvelous to have looked down upon a battle a hundred miles long," he said. "Have you any idea where these Uhlans intend to take us?"
"I haven't. Doubtless they don't know themselves. The night is here now, and I imagine they'll stop somewhere soon."
The twilight died in the west as well as the east, and darkness came over the field of gigantic strife. But the earth continued to quiver with the thunder of artillery, and John felt the waves of air pulsing in his ears. Now and then searchlights burned in a white blaze across the hills. Fields, trees and houses would stand out for a moment, and then be gone absolutely.
John's vivid imagination turned the whole into a storm at night. The artillery was the thunder and the flare of the searchlights was the lightning. His mind created, for a little while, the illusion that the combat had passed out of the hands of man and that nature was at work. He and Fleury ceased to talk and he walked on, thinking little of his destination. He had no sense of weariness, nor of any physical need at all.
Von Arnheim rode up by his side and said:
"You'll not have to walk much further, Mr. Scott. A camp of ours is just beyond a brook, not more than a few hundred yards away, and the prisoners will stay there for the night. I'm sorry to find you among the French fighting against us. We Germans expected American sympathy. There is so much German blood in the United States."
"But, as I told Captain von Boehlen, we're a republic, and we're democrats. In many of the big ideas there's a gulf between us and Germany so wide that it can never be bridged. This war has made clear the enormous difference."
"And yet, as a people, we like each other personally," he said.
"That's so, but as nations we diverge absolutely."
"Perhaps, I can't dispute it. But here is our camp. You'll be treated well. We Germans are not barbarians, as our enemies allege."