In The Hollow of Thy Hand

For a moment he recoiled as though he had received a blow between the eyes.

There they sat, little glistening schapskas rakishly tilted over one ear, black-and-white pennons drooping from the lance-points, schabraques edged with yellow--aye, and tunics also, yellow and blue--those were the colours--the colours of the 11th Uhlans.

Then, for the first time, he fully realized his position and what it might mean. Death was the penalty for what he had done--death even though the man he had shot were not dead--death though he had not even hit him. That was not all; it meant death in its most awful form--hanging! For this was the penalty: any civilian, foreigner, franc-soldier, or other unrecognized combatant, firing upon German troops, giving aid to French troops while within the sphere of German influence, by aiding, abetting, signalling, informing, or otherwise, was hung--sometimes with a drum-head court-martial, sometimes without.

Every bit of blood and strength seemed to leave his limbs; he leaned back against the table, cold with fear.

This was the young man who had sat sketching at Sadowa where the needle-guns sent a shower of lead over his rocky observatory; the same who had risked death by fearful mutilation in Oran when he rode back and flung a half-dead Spahi over his own saddle, in the face of a charging, howling hurricane of Kabyle horsemen.

Sabre and lance and bullets were things he understood, but he did not understand ropes.