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T so happened that the second platoon of the third squad of the Ashkadar regiment found itself completely cut off from the main body of the army, and this without the loss of a single cartridge or soldier.

How this came about, and why a group of men, fifteen or twenty strong, had suddenly become an independent fighting unit, none of them could tell.

At the outset, the entire Ashkadar regiment zealously trudged throughout the long autumn night along an interminable road, leading no one knew where, into the dark, damp, and hostile distance. To smoke or to converse was forbidden. In the dark, the black mass of the regiment, bristling with its bayonets like some huge, porcupine-like creature, crawled steadily onward, filling the air with the shuffling of innumerable feet. The men kept stumbling