CHAPTER XV.
IN THE HEART OF THE HILL.
While the dead were being buried and the wounded removed, there was a long cessation of the savage struggle. Indeed, the long lull in the firing almost led some people to believe that it would be heard no more. Crowds on the Western heights glanced curiously, anxiously, towards Fort Warden, with some idea that its picked garrison would now abandon their desperate and daring attempt to hold the position. It became known that the enemy's plans had been in part defeated—either by reason of some official blunder or through the watchfulness of the French at the other extremity of the Channel Tunnel. The German troops that were to have raided the French terminus, and then poured into England, under the protection of the guns of Fort Warden, already seized
