CHAPTER XVIII

THE WATCH ON THE RHINE Evening was closing upon a waste of muddy flats. Far as the eye could see there was no rise in the land; it lay level to the skyline, with here and there a glint of still water, and, further off, flat banks between which a wide river flowed sluggishly. If you cared to follow the river, you came at length to stone blockhouses, near which sentries patrolled the banks—and would probably have turned you back rudely. From the blockhouses a high fence of barbed-wire, thickly criss-crossed, stretche…