At half-past eight, nobody entering their trench would have dreamed that the Hotwaters were going into a serious action in half an hour. The men were lounging about, squatting on the firing-step, chaffing and talking—laughing even—quite easily and naturally; some were smoking, and others had produced biscuits and bully beef from their haversacks and were calmly eating their breakfast.

Everton felt a glow of pride as he looked at them. These men were his friends, his fellows, his comrades: they were of the Hotwater Guards—his regiment, and his battalion. He had heard often enough that the Guards Brigades were the finest brigades in the Army, that this particular brigade was the best of all the Guards, that his battalion was the best of the Brigade. Hitherto he had rather deprecated these remarks as savoring of pride and self-conceit, but now he began to believe that they must be true; and so believing, if he had but known it, he had taken another long step on the way to becoming the perfect soldier, who firmly believes his regiment the finest in the world and is ready to die in proof of the belief.

"Dusty Miller," the next file on his left, who was eating bread and cheese, spoke to him.

"Why don't you eat some grab, Toffee?" he mumbled cheerfully, with his mouth full. "In a game like this you never know when you'll get the next chance of a bite."

"Don't feel particularly hungry," answered Toffee with an attempt to appear as off-handed and casual and at ease as his questioner. "So I think I'd better save my ration until I'm hungry."

Dusty Miller sliced off a wedge of bread with the knife edge against his thumb, popped it in his mouth, and followed it with a corner of cheese.

"A-ah!" he said profoundly, and still munching; "there's no sense in saving rations when you're going into action. I'd a chum once that always did that; said he got more satisfaction out of a meal when the job was over and he was real hungry, and had a chance to eat in comfort—more or less comfort. And one day we was for it he saved a tin o' sardines and a big chunk of cake and a bottle of pickled onions that had just come to him from home the day before; said he was looking forward to a good feed that night after the show was over. And—and he was killed that day!"

Dusty Miller halted there with the inborn artistry that left his climax to speak for itself.

"Hard luck!" said Toffee sympathetically. "So his feed was wasted!"

"Not to say wasted exactly," said Dusty, resuming bread and cheese. "Because I remembers to this day how good them onions was. Still it was wasted, far as he was concerned—and he was particular fond o' pickled onions."

But even the prospect of wasting his rations did nothing to induce Toffee to eat a meal. The man on Toffee's right was crouched back on the firing-step apparently asleep or near it. Dusty Miller had turned and opened a low-toned conversation with the next man, the frequent repetition of "I says" and "she says" affording some clew to the thread of his story and inclining Toffee to believe it not meant for him to hear. He felt he must speak to some one, and it was with relief that he saw Halliday, the man on his other side, rouse himself and look up. Something about Toffee's face caught his attention.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, leaning forward and speaking quietly. "This is your first charge, isn't it!"

"Yes," said Toffee, "I'm all right. I—I think I'm all right."

The other moved slightly on the firing-step, leaving a little room, and Toffee took this as an invitation to sit down. Halliday continued to speak in low tones that were not likely to pass beyond his listener's ear.

"Don't you get scared," he said. "You've nothing much to be scared about."

He threw a little emphasis, and Toffee fancied a little envy, into the "you."

"I'm not scared exactly," said Toffee. "I'm sort of wondering what it will be like."

"I know," said Halliday, "I know; and who should, if I didn't? But I can tell you this—you don't need to be afraid of shells, you don't need to be afraid of bullets, and least of all is there any need to be afraid of the cold iron when the Hotwaters get into the trench. You don't need to be afraid of being wounded, because that only means home and a hospital and a warm dry bed; you don't need to be afraid of dying, because you've got to die some day, anyhow. There's only one thing in this game to be afraid of, and there isn't many finds that in their first engagement. It's the ones like me that get it."

Toffee glanced at him curiously and in some amazement. Now that he looked closely, he could see that, despite his easy loungeful attitude and steady voice, and apparently indifferent look, there was something odd and unexplainable about Halliday: some faintest twitching of his lips, a shade of pallor on his cheek, a hunted look deep at the back of his eyes. Everton tried to speak lightly.

"And what is it, then, that the likes o' you get?"

Halliday's voice sank to little more than a whisper. "It's the fear o' fear," he said steadily. "Maybe, you think you know what that is, that you feel it yourself. You know what I mean, I suppose?"

Toffee nodded. "I think so," he said. "What I fear myself is that I'll be afraid and show that I'm afraid, that I'll do something rotten when we get out up there."

He jerked his head up and back towards the open where the rifles sputtered and the bullets whistled querulously.

"There's plenty fear that," admitted Halliday, "before their first action; but mostly it passes the second they leave cover and can't protect themselves and have to trust to whatever there is outside, themselves to bring them through. You don't know the beginning of how bad the fear o' fear can be till you have seen dozens of your mates killed, till you've had death no more than touch you scores of times, like I have."

"But you don't mean to tell me," said Toffee incredulously, "that you are afraid of yourself, that you can't trust yourself now? Why, I've heard said often that you're one of the coolest under fire, and that you don't know what fear is!"

"It's a good reputation to have if you can keep it," said Halliday. "But it makes it worse if you can't."

"I wish," said Toffee enviously, "I was as sure of keeping it as you are to-day."

Halliday pulled his hand from his pocket and held it beside him where only Toffee could see it. It was quivering like a flag-halliard in a stiff breeze. He thrust it back in his pocket.

"Doesn't look too sure, does it?" he said grimly. "And my heart is shaking a sight worse than my hand."

He was interrupted by the arrival of a group of German shells on and about the section of trench they were in. One burst on the rear lip of the trench, spattering earth and bullets about them and leaving a choking reek swirling and eddying along the trench. There was silence for an instant, and then an officer's voice called from the near traverse. "Is anybody hit there!" A sergeant shouted back "No, sir," and was immediately remonstrated with by an indignant private busily engaged in scraping the remains of a mud clod from his eye.

"You might wait a minute, Sergeant," he said, "afore you reports no casualties, just to give us time to look round and count if all our limbs is left on. And I've serious doubts at this minute whether my eye is in its right place or bulging out the back o' my head; anyway, it feels as if an eight-inch Krupp had bumped fair into it."

When the explosion came, Toffee Everton had instinctively ducked and crouched, but he noticed that Halliday never moved or gave a sign of the nearness of any danger. Toffee remarked this to him.

"And I don't see," he confessed, "where that fits in with this hand- and heart-shaking o' yours."

Halliday looked at him curiously.

"If that was the worst," he said, "I could stand it. It isn't. It isn't the beginning of the least of the worst. If it had fell in the trench, now, and mucked up half a dozen men, there'd have been something to squeal about. That's the sort o' thing that breaks a man up—your own mates that was talking to you a minute afore, ripped to bits and torn to ribbons. I've seen nothing left of a whole live man but a pair o' burnt boots. I've seen—" He stopped abruptly and shivered a little. "I'm not going to talk about it," he said. "I think about it and see it too often in my dreams as it is. And, besides," he went on, "I didn't duck that time, because I've learnt enough to know it's too late to duck when the shell bursts a dozen yards from you. I'm not so much afraid of dying, either. I've got to die, I've little doubt, before this war is out; I don't think there's a dozen men in this battalion that came out with it in the beginning and haven't been home sick or wounded since. I've seen one-half the battalion wiped out in one engagement and built up with drafts, and the other half wiped out in the next scrap. We've lost fifty and sixty and seventy per cent. of our strength at different times, and I've come through it all without a scratch. Do you suppose I don't know it's against reason for me to last out much longer? But I'm not afraid o' that. I'm not afraid of the worst death I've seen a man die—and that's something pretty bad, believe me. What I'm afraid of is myself, of my nerve cracking, of my doing something that will disgrace the Regiment."

The man's nerves were working now; there was a quiver of excitement in his voice, a grayer shade on his cheek, a narrowing and a restless movement of his eyes, a stronger twitching of his lips. More shells crashed sharply; a little along the line a gust of rifle-bullets swept over and into the parapet; a Maxim rap-rap-rapped and its bullets spat hailing along the parapet above their heads.

Halliday caught his breath and shivered again.

"That," he said—"that is one of the devils we've got to face presently." His eyes glanced furtively about him. "God!" he muttered, "if I could only get out of this! 'Tisn't fair, I tell ye, it isn't fair to ask a man that's been through what I have to take it on again, knowing that if I do come through, 'twill be the same thing to go through over and over until they get me; or until my own sergeant shoots me for refusing to face it."

Everton had listened in amazed silence—an understanding utterly beyond him. He knew the name that Halliday bore in the regiment, knew that he was seeing and hearing more than Halliday perhaps had ever shown or told to anyone. Shamefacedly and self-consciously, he tried to say something to console and hearten the other man, but Halliday interrupted him roughly.

"That's it!" he said bitterly. "Go on! Pat me on the back and tell me to be a good boy and not to be frightened. I'm coming to it at last: old Bob Halliday that's been through it from the beginning, one o' the Old Contemptibles, come down to be mothered and hushaby-baby'd by a blanky recruit, with the first polish hardly off his new buttons."

He broke off and into bitter cursing, reviling the Germans, the war, himself and Everton, his sergeant and platoon commander, the O.C., and at last the regiment itself. But at that the torrent of his oaths broke off, and he sat silent and shaking for a minute. He glanced sideways at last at the embarrassed Everton.

"Don't take no notice o' me, chum," he said. "I wasn't speaking too loud, was I? The others haven't noticed, do you think? I don't want to look round for a minute."

Everton assured him that he had not spoken too loud, that nobody appeared to have noticed anything, and that none were looking their way. He added a feeble question as to whether Halliday, if he felt so bad, could not report himself as sick or something and escape having to leave the trench.

Halliday's lips twisted in a bitter grin.

"That would be a pretty tale," he said. "No, boy, I'll try and pull through once more, and if my heart fails me—look here, I've often thought o' this, and some day, maybe, it will come to it."

He lifted his rifle and put the butt down in the trench bottom, slipped his bayonet out, and holding the rifle near the muzzle with one hand, with the other placed the point of the bayonet to the trigger of the rifle. He removed it instantly and returned it to its place.

"There's always that," he said. "It can be done in a second, and no matter how a man's hand shakes, he can steady the point of the bayonet against the trigger-guard, push it down till the point pushes the trigger home."

"Do you mean," stammered Everton in amazement—"do you mean—shoot yourself?"

"Ssh! not so loud," cautioned Halliday. "Yes, it's better than being shot by my own officer, isn't it?"

Everton's mind was floundering hopelessly round this strange problem. He could understand a man being afraid; he was not sure that he wasn't afraid himself; but that a man afraid that he could not face death could yet contemplate certain death by his own hand, was completely beyond him.

Halliday drew his breath in a deep sigh.

"We'll say no more about it," he said. "I feel better now; it's something to know I always have that to fall back on at the worst. I'll be all right now—until it comes the minute to climb over the parapet."

It was nearly nine o'clock, and word was passed down the line for every man to get down as low as he could in the bottom of the trench. The trench they were about to attack was only forty or fifty yards away, and since the Heavies as well as the Field guns were to bombard, there was quite a large possibility of splinters and fragments being thrown by the lyddite back as far as the British trench. At nine, sharp to the tick of the clock, the rush, rush, rush of a field battery's shells passed overhead. Because the target was so close, the passing shells seemed desperately near to the British parapet, as indeed they actually were. The rush of shells and the crash of their explosion sounded in the forward trench before the boom of the guns which fired them traveled to the British trench. Before the first round of this opening battery had finished, another and another joined in, and then, in a deluge of noise, the intense bombardment commenced.

Crouching low in the bottom of the trench, half deafened by the uproar, the men waited for the word to move. The concentrated fire on this portion of front indicated clearly to the Germans that an attack was coming, and where it was to be expected. The obviously correct procedure for the gunners was of course to have bombarded many sections of front so that no certain clew would be given as to the point of the coming attack. But this was in the days when shells were very, very precious things, and gunners had to grit their teeth helplessly, doling out round by round, while the German gun- and rifle-fire did its worst. The Germans, then, could see now where the attack was concentrated, and promptly proceeded to break it up before it was launched. Shells began to sweep the trench where the Hotwater Guards lay, to batter at their parapet, and to prepare a curtain of fire along their front.

Everton lay and listened to the appalling clamor; but when the word was passed round to get ready, he rose to his feet and climbed to the firing-step without any overpowering sense of fear. A sentence from the man on his left had done a good deal to hearten him.

"Gostrewth! 'ark at our guns!" he said. "They ain't 'arf pitchin' it in. W'y, this ain't goin' to be no charge; it's going to be a sort of merry picnic, a game of ''Ere we go gatherin' nuts in May.' There won't be any Germans left in them trenches, and we'll 'ave nothin' to do but collect the 'elmets and sooveneers and make ourselves at 'ome."

"Did you hear that!" Everton asked Halliday. "Is it anyways true, do you think?"

"A good bit," said Halliday. "I've never seen a bit of German front smothered up by our guns the way this seems to be now, though I've often enough seen it the other way. The trench in front should be smashed past any shape for stopping our charge if the gunners are making any straight shooting at all."

It was evident that the whole trench shared his opinion, and expressions of amazed delight ran up and down the length of the Hotwaters. When the order came to leave the trench, the men were up and out of it with a bound.

Everton was too busy with his own scramble put to pay much heed to Halliday; but as they worked out through their own barbed wire, he was relieved to find him at his side. He caught Everton's look, and although his teeth were gripped tight, he nodded cheerfully. Presently, when they were forming into line again beyond the wire, Halliday spoke.

"Not too bad," he said. "The guns has done it for us this time. Come on, now, and keep your wits when you get across."

In the ensuing rush across the open, Everton was conscious of no sensation of fear. The guns had lifted their fire farther back as the Hotwaters emerged from their trench, and the rush and rumble of their shells was still passing overhead as the line advanced. The German artillery hardly dared drop their range to sweep the advance, because of its proximity to their own trench. A fairly heavy rifle-fire was coming from the flanks, but to a certain extent that was kept down by some of our batteries spreading their fire over those portions of the German trench which were not being attacked, and by a heavy rifle- and machine-gun fire which was pelted across from the opposite parts of the British line.

From the immediate front, which was the Hotwaters' objective, there was practically no attempt at resistance until the advance was half-way across the short distance between the trenches, and even then it was no more than a spasmodic attempt and the feeble resistance of a few rifles and a machine-gun. The Hotwaters reached the trench with comparatively slight loss, pushed into it, and over it, and pressed on to the next line, the object being to threaten the continuance of the attack, to take the next trench if the resistance was not too severe, and so to give time for the reorganization of the first captured trench to resist the German counter-attack.

Everton was one of the first to reach the forward trench. It had been roughly handled by the artillery fire, and the men in it made little show of resistance. The Hotwaters swarmed into the broken ditch, shooting and stabbing the few who fought back, disarming the prisoners who had surrendered with hands over their heads and quavering cries of "Kamerad." Everton rushed one man who appeared to be in two minds whether to surrender or not, fingering and half lifting his rifle and lowering it again, looking round over his shoulder, once more raising his rifle muzzle. Everton killed him with the bayonet. Afterwards he climbed out and ran on, after the line had pushed forward to the next trench. There was an awe, and a thrill of satisfaction in his heart as he looked at his stained bayonet, but, as he suddenly recognized with a tremendous joy, not the faintest sensation of being afraid. He looked round grinning to the man next him, and was on the point of shouting some jest to him, when he saw the man stumble and pitch heavily on his face. It flashed into Everton's mind that he had tripped over a hidden wire, and he was about to shout some chaffing remark, when he saw the back of the man's head as he lay face down. But even that unpleasant sight brought no fear to him.

There was a stout barricade of wire in front of the next trench, and an order was shouted along to halt and lie down in front of it. The line dropped, and while some lay prone and fired as fast as they could at any loophole or bobbing head they could see, others lit bombs and tossed them into the trench. This trench also had been badly mauled by the shells, and the fire from it was feeble. Everton lay firing for a few minutes, casting side glances on an officer close in front of him, and on two or three men along the line who were coolly cutting through the barbed wire with heavy nippers. Everton saw the officer spin round and drop to his knees, his left hand nursing his hanging right arm. Everton jumped up and went over to him.

"Let me go on with it, sir," he said eagerly, and without waiting for any consent stooped and picked up the fallen wire-cutters and set to work. He and the others, standing erect and working on the wire, naturally drew a heavy proportion of the aimed fire; but Everton was only conscious of an uplifting exhilaration, a delight that he should have had the chance at such a prominent position. Many bullets came very close to him, but none touched him, and he went on cutting wire after wire, quickly and methodically, grasping the strand well in the jaws of the nippers, gripping till the wire parted and the severed ends sprang loose, calmly fitting the nippers to the next strand.

Even when he had cut a clear path through, he went on working, widening the breach, cutting more wires, dragging the trailing ends clear. Then he ran back to the line and to the officer who had lain watching him.

"Your wire-nippers, sir," he said. "Shall I put them in your case for you?"

"Stick them in your pocket, Everton," said the youngster; "you've done good work with them. Now lie down here."

All this was a matter of no more than three or four minutes' work. When the other gaps were completed—the men in them being less fortunate than Everton and having several wounded during the task—the line rose, rushed streaming through the gaps and down into the trench. If anything, the damage done by the shells was greater there than in the first line, mainly perhaps because the heavier guns had not hesitated to fire on the second line where the closeness of the first line to the British would have made risky shooting. There were a good many dead and wounded Germans in this second trench, and of the remainder many were hidden away in their dug-outs, their nerves shaken beyond the sticking-point of courage by the artillery fire first, and later by the close-quarter bombing and the rush of the cold steel.

The Hotwaters held that trench for some fifteen minutes. Then a weak counter-attack attempted to emerge from another line of trenches a good two hundred yards back, but was instantly fallen upon by our artillery and scourged by the accurate fire of the Hotwaters. The attack broke before it was well under way, and scrambled back under cover.

Shortly afterwards the first captured trench having been put into some shape for defense, the advance line of the Hotwaters retired. A small covering party stayed and kept up a rapid fire till most of the others had gone, and then climbed through the trench and doubled back after them.

The officer, whose wire-cutters Everton had used, had been hit rather badly in the arm. He had made light of the wound, and remained in the trench with the covering party; but when he came to retire, he found that the pain and loss of blood had left him shaky and dizzy. Everton helped him to climb from the trench; but as they ran back he saw from the corner of his eye that the officer had slowed to a walk. He turned back and, ignoring the officer's advice to push on, urged him to lean on him. It ended up by Everton and the officer being the last men in, Everton half supporting, half carrying the other. Once more he felt a childish pleasure at this opportunity to distinguish himself. He was half intoxicated with the heady wine of excitement and success, he asked only for other and greater and riskier opportunities. "Risk," he thought contemptuously, "is only a pleasant excitement, danger the spice to the risk." He asked his sergeant to be allowed to go out and help the stretcher-bearers who were clearing the wounded from the ground over which the first advance had been made.

"No," said the Sergeant shortly. "The stretcher-bearers have their job, and they've got to do it. Your job is here, and you can stop and do that. You've done enough for one day." Then, conscious perhaps that he had spoken with unnecessary sharpness, he added a word. "You've made a good beginning, lad, and done good work for your first show; don't spoil it with rank gallery play."

But now that the German gunners knew the British line had advanced and held the captured trench, they pelted it, the open ground behind it, and the trench that had been the British front line, with a storm of shell-fire. The rifle-fire was hotter, too, and the rallied defense was pouring in whistling stream of bullets. But the captured trench, which it will be remembered was a recaptured British one, ran back and joined up with the British lines. It was possible therefore to bring up plenty of ammunition, sandbags, and reinforcements, and by now the defense had been sufficiently made good to have every prospect of resisting any counter-attack and of withstanding the bombardment to which it was being subjected. But the heavy fire drove the stretcher-bearers off the open ground, while there still remained some dead and wounded to be brought in.

Everton had missed Halliday, and his anxious inquiries failed to find him or any word of him, until at last one man said he believed Halliday had been dropped in the rush on the first trench. Everton stood up and peered back over the ground behind them. Thirty yards away he saw a man lying prone and busily at work with his trenching-tool, endeavoring to build up a scanty cover. Everton shouted at the pitch of his voice, "Halliday!" The digging figure paused, lifted the trenching-tool and waved it, and then fell to work again. Everton pressed along the crowded trench to the sergeant.

"Sergeant," he said breathlessly, "Halliday's lying out there wounded, he's a good pal o' mine and I'd like to fetch him in."

The Sergeant was rather doubtful. He made Everton point out the digging figure, and was calculating the distance from the nearest point of the trench, and the bullets that drummed between.

"It's almost a cert you get hit," he said, "even if you crawl out. He's got a bit of cover and he's making more, fast. I think—"

A voice behind interrupted, and Everton and the Sergeant turned to find the Captain looking up at them.

"What's this?" he repeated, and the Sergeant explained the position.

"Go ahead!" said the Captain. "Get him in if you can, and good luck to you."

Everton wanted no more. Two minutes later he was out of the trench and racing back across the open.

"Come on, Halliday," he said. "I'll give you a hoist in. Where are you hit?"

"Leg and arm," said Halliday briefly; and then, rather ungraciously, "You're a fool to be out here; but I suppose now you're here, you might as well give me a hand in."

But he spoke differently after Everton had given him a hand, had lifted him and carried him, and so brought him back to the trench and lowered him into waiting hands. His wounds were bandaged and, before he was carried off, he spoke to Everton.

"Good-by, Toffee," he said and held out his left hand, "I owe you a heap. And look here—-" He hesitated a moment and then spoke in tones so low that Everton had to bend over the stretcher to hear him. "My leg's smashed bad, and I'm done for the Front and the old Hotwaters. I wouldn't like it to get about—I don't want the others to think—to know about me feeling—well, like I told you back there before the charge."

Toffee grabbed the uninjured-hand hard. "You old frost!" he said gayly, "there's no need to keep it up any longer now; but I don't mind telling you, old man, you fairly hoaxed me that time, and actually I believed what you were saying. 'Course, I know better now; but I'll punch the head off any man that ever whispers a word against you."

Halliday looked at him queerly. "Good-by, Toffee," he said again, "and thank ye."



ANTI-AIRCRAFT

"Enemy airmen appearing over our lines have been turned hack or driven off by shell fire."—EXTRACT FROM DESPATCH.

Gardening is a hobby which does not exist under very favorable conditions at the front, its greatest drawback being that when the gardener's unit is moved from one place to another his garden cannot accompany him. Its devotees appear to derive a certain amount of satisfaction from the mere making of a garden, the laying-out and digging and planting; but it can be imagined that the most enthusiastic gardener would in time become discouraged by a long series of beginnings without any endings to his labors, to a frequent sowing and an entire absence of reaping.

There are, however, some units which, from the nature of their business, are stationary in one place for months on end, and here the gardener as a rule has an opportunity for the indulgence of his pursuit. In clearing-hospitals, ammunition-parks, and Army Service Corps supply points, there are, I believe, many such fixed abodes; but the manners and customs of the inhabitants of such happy resting-places are practically unknown to the men who live month in month out in a narrow territory, bounded on the east by the forward firing line and on the west by the line of the battery positions, or at farthest the villages of the reserve billets. In any case these places are rather outside the scope of tales dealing with what may be called the "Under Fire Front," and it was this front which I had in mind when I said that gardening did not receive much encouragement at the front. But during the first spring of the War I know of at least one enthusiast who did his utmost, metaphorically speaking, to beat his sword into a plowshare, and to turn aside at every opportunity from the duty of killing Germans to the pleasures of growing potatoes. He was a gunner in the detachment of the Blue Marines, which ran a couple of armored motor-cars carrying anti-aircraft guns.

It is one of the advantages of this branch of the air-war that when a suitable position is fixed on for defense of any other position, the detachment may stay there for some considerable time. There are other advantages which will unfold themselves to those initiated in the ways of the trench zone, although those outside of it may miss them; but everyone will see that prolonged stays in the one position give the gardener his opportunity. In this particular unit of the Blue Marines was a gunner who intensely loved the potting and planting, the turning over of yielding earth, the bedding-out and transplanting, the watering and weeding and tending of a garden, possibly because the greater part of his life had been lived at sea in touch with nothing more yielding than a steel plate or a hard plank.

The gunner was known throughout the unit by no other name than Mary, fittingly taken from the nursery rhyme which inquires, "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?" The similarity between Mary of the Blue Marines and Mary of the nursery rhyme ends, however, with the first line, since Blue Marine Mary made no attempt to rear "silver bells and cockle shells" (whatever they may be) all in a row. His whole energies were devoted to the raising of much more practical things, like lettuces, radishes, carrots, spring onions, and any other vegetable which has the commendable reputation of arriving reasonably early at maturity.

Twice that spring Mary's labors had been wasted because the section had moved before the time was ripe from a gardener's point of view, and although Mary strove to transplant his garden by uprooting the vegetables, packing them away in a box in the motor, and planting them out in the new position, the vegetables failed to survive the breaking of their home ties, and languished and died in spite of Mary's tender care. After the first failure he tried to lay out a portable garden, enlisting the aid of "Chips" the carpenter in the manufacture of a number of boxes, in which he placed earth and his new seedlings. This attempt, however, failed even more disastrously than the first, the O.C. having made a most unpleasant fuss on the discovery of two large boxes of mustard and cress "cluttering up," as he called it, the gun-mountings on one of the armored cars, and, when the section moved suddenly in the dead of night, refusing point-blank to allow any available space to be loaded up with Mary's budding garden. Mary's plaintive inquiry as to what he was to do with the boxes was met by the brutal order to "chuck the lot overboard," and the counter-inquiry as to whether he thought this show was a perambulating botanical gardens.

So Mary lost his second garden complete, even unto the box of spring onions which were the apple of his gardening eye. But he brisked up when the new position was established and he learned through the officer's servant that the selected spot was considered an excellent one, and offered every prospect of being held by the section for a considerable time. He selected a favorable spot and proceeded once more to lay out a garden and to plant out a new lot of vegetables.

The section's new position was only some fifteen hundred yards from the forward trench; but, being at the bottom of a gently sloping ridge which ran between the position and the German lines, it was covered from all except air observation. The two armored cars, containing guns, were hidden away amongst the shattered ruins of a little hamlet; their armor-plated bodies, already rendered as inconspicuous as possible by erratic daubs of bright colors laid on after the most approved Futurist style, were further hidden by untidy wisps of straw, a few casual beams, and any other of the broken rubbish which had once been a village. The men had their quarters in the cellars of one of the broken houses, and the two officers inhabited the corner of a house with a more or less remaining roof.

Mary's garden was in a sunny corner of what had been in happier days the back garden of one of the cottages. The selection, as it turned out, was not altogether a happy one, because the garden, when abandoned by its former owner, had run to seed most liberally, and the whole of its area appeared to be impregnated with a variety of those seeds which give the most trouble to the new possessor of an old garden. Anyone with the real gardening instinct appears to have no difficulty in distinguishing between weeds and otherwise, even on their first appearance in shape of a microscopic green shoot; but flowers are not weeds, and Mary had a good deal of trouble to distinguish between the self-planted growths of nasturtiums, foxgloves, marigolds, forget-me-nots, and other flowers, and the more prosaic but useful carrots and spring onions which Mary had introduced. Probably a good many onions suffered the penalty of bad company, and were sacrificed in the belief that they were flowers; but on the whole the new garden did well, and began to show the trim rows of green shoots which afford such joy to the gardening soul. The shoots grew rapidly, and as time passed uneventfully and the section remained unmoved, the garden flourished and the vegetables drew near to the day when they would be fit for consumption.

Mary gloated over that garden; he went to a world of trouble with it, he bent over it and weeded it for hours on end; he watered it religiously every night, he even erected miniature forcing frames over some of the vegetable rows, ransacking the remains of the broken-down hamlet for squares of glass or for any pieces large enough for his purpose. He built these cunningly with frameworks of wood and untwisted strands of barbed wire, and there is no doubt they helped the growth of his garden immensely.

Although they have not been torched upon, it must not be supposed that Mary had no other duties. Despite our frequently announced "Supremacy of the Air," the anti-aircraft guns were in action rather frequently. The German aeroplanes in this part of the line appeared to ignore the repeated assurances in our Press that the German 'plane invariably makes off on the appearance of a British one; and although it is true that in almost every case the German was "turned back," he very frequently postponed the turning until he had sailed up and down the line a few times and seen, it may be supposed, all that there was to see.

At such times—and they happened as a rule at least once a day and occasionally two, three, or four times a day—Mary had to run from his gardening and help man the guns.

In the course of a month the section shot away many thousands of shells, and, it is to be hoped, severely frightened many German pilots, although at that time they could only claim to have brought down one 'plane, and that in a descent so far behind the German lines that its fate was uncertain.

It must be admitted that the gunners on the whole made excellent shooting, and if they did not destroy their target, or even make him turn back, they fulfilled the almost equally useful object of making him keep so high that he could do little useful observing. But the short periods of time spent by the section in shooting were no more than enough to add a pleasant flavor of sport to life, and on the whole, since the weather was good and the German gunnery was not—or at least not good enough to be troublesome to the section—life during that month moved very pleasantly.

But at last there came a day when it looked as if some of the inconveniences of war were due to arrive. The German aeroplane appeared as usual one morning just after the section had completed breakfast. The methodical regularity of hours kept by the German pilots added considerably to the comfort and convenience of the section by allowing them to time their hours of sleep, their meals, or an afternoon run by the O.C. on the motor into the near-by town, so as to fit in nicely with the duty of anti-aircraft guns.

On this morning at the usual hour the aeroplane appeared, and the gunners, who were waiting in handy proximity to the cars, jumped to their stations. The muzzles of the two-pounder pom-poms moved slowly after their target, and when the range-indicator told that it was within reach of their shells the first gun opened with a trial beltful. "Bang—bang—bang—bang!" it shouted, a string of shells singing and sighing on their way into silence. In a few seconds, "Puff—puff—puff—puff!" four pretty little white balls broke out and floated solid against the sky. They appeared well below their target, and both the muzzles tilted a little and barked off another flight of shells. This time they appeared to burst in beautiful proximity to the racing aeroplane, and immediately the two-pounders opened a steady and accurate bombardment. The shells were evidently dangerously close to the 'plane, for it tilted sharply and commenced to climb steadily; but it still held on its way over the British lines, and the course it was taking it was evident would bring it almost directly over the Blue Marines and their guns. The pom-poms continued their steady yap-yap, jerking and springing between each, round, like eager terriers jumping the length of their chain, recoiling and jumping, and yelping at every jump. But although the shells were dead in line the range was too great, and the guns slowed down their rate of fire, merely rapping off an occasional few rounds to keep the observer at a respectful distance, without an unnecessary waste of ammunition.

Arrived above them, the aeroplane banked steeply and swung round in a complete circle.

"Dash his impudence," growled the captain. "Slap at him again, just for luck." The only effect the resulting slap at him had, however, was to show the 'plane pilot that he was well out of range and to bring him spiraling steeply down a good thousand feet. This brought him within reach of the shells again, and both guns opened rapidly, dotting the sky thickly with beautiful white puffs of smoke, through which the enemy sailed swiftly. Then suddenly another shape and color of smoke appeared beneath him, and a red light burst from it flaring and floating slowly downwards. Another followed, and then another, and the 'plane straightened out its course, swerved, and flashed swiftly off down-wind, pursued to the limit of their range by the raving pom-poms. "Which it seems to me," said the Blue Marine sergeant reflectively, "that our Tauby had us spotted and was signaling his guns to call and leave a card on us."

That afternoon showed some proof of the correctness of the sergeant's supposition; a heavy shell soared over and dropped with a crash in an open field some two hundred yards beyond the outermost house of the hamlet. In five minutes another followed, and in the same field blew out a hole about twenty yards from the first. A third made another hole another twenty yards off, and a fourth again at the same interval.

When the performance ceased, the captain and his lieutenant held a conference over the matter. "It looks as if we'd have to shift," said the captain. "That fellow has got us marked down right enough."

"If he doesn't come any nearer," said the lieutenant, "we're all right. We won't need to take cover when the shelling starts, and even if the guns are shooting when the German is shelling, the armor-plate will easily stand off splinters from that distance."

"Yes," said the captain. "But do you suppose our friend the Flighty Hun won't have a peep at us to-morrow morning to see where those shells landed? If he does, or if he takes a photograph, those holes will show up like a chalk-mark on a blackboard; then he has only to tell his gun to step this way a couple of hundred yards and we get it in the neck. I'm inclined to think we'd better up anchor and away."

"We're pretty comfortable here, you know," urged the lieutenant, "and it's a pity to get out. It might be that those shots were blind chance. I vote for waiting another day, anyhow, and seeing what happens. At the worst we can pack up and stand by with steam up; then if the shells pitch too near we can slip the cable and run for it"

"Right-oh!" said the captain.

Next morning the enemy aeroplane appeared again at its appointed hour and sailed overhead, leaving behind it a long wake of smoke-puffs; and at the same hour in the afternoon as the previous shelling the German gun opened fire, dropping its first shell neatly fifty yards further from the shell-holes of the day before. The aeroplane, of course, had reported, or its photograph had shown, the previous day's shells to have dropped apparently fifty yards to the left of the hamlet. The gun accordingly corrected its aim and opened fire on a spot fifty yards more to the right. For hours it bombarded that suffering field energetically, and at the end of that time, when they were satisfied the shelling was over, the Blue Marines climbed from their cellar. Next morning the aeroplane appeared again, and the Blue Marines allowed it this time to approach unattacked. Convinced probably by this and the appearance of the numerous shell-pits scattered round the gun position, the aeroplane swooped lower to verify its observations. Unfortunately another anti-aircraft gun a mile further along the line thought this too good an opportunity to miss, and opened rapid fire. The 'plane leaped upward and away, and the Blue Marines sped on its way with a stream of following shells.

"If the Huns' minds work on the fixed and appointed path, one would expect the same old field will get a strafing this afternoon," said the captain afterwards. "The airman will have seen the village knocked about, and if he knew that those last shells came from here he'll just conclude that yesterday's shooting missed us, and the gunners will have another whale at us this afternoon."

He was right; the gun had "another whale" at them, and again dug many holes in the old field.

But next morning the Germans played a new and disconcerting game. The aeroplane hovered high above and dropped a light, and a minute later the Blue Marines heard a shrill whistle, that grew and changed to a whoop, and ended with the same old crash in the same old field.

"Now," said the captain. "Stand by for trouble. That brute is spotting for his gun."

The aeroplane dropped a light, turned, and circled round to the left. Five minutes later another shell screamed over, and this time fell crashing into the hamlet. The hit was palpable and unmistakable; a huge dense cloud of smoke and mortar-, lime-, and red brick-dust leapt and billowed and hung heavily over the village.

"This," said the captain rapidly, "is where we do the rabbit act. Get to cover, all of you, and lie low."

They did the rabbit act, scuttling amongst the broken houses to the shelter of their cellar and diving hastily into it. Another shell arrived, shrieking wrathfully, smashed into another broken house, and scattered its ruins in a whirlwind of flying fragments.

Now Mary, of course, was in the cellar with the rest, and Mary's garden was in full view from the cellar entrance, and twenty or twenty-five yards from it. The rest of the party were surprised to see Mary, as the loud clatter of falling stones subsided, leap for the cellar steps, run up them, and disappear out into the open. He was back in a couple of minutes. "I just wondered," he said breathlessly, "if those blighters had done any damage to my vegetables." When another shell came he popped up again for another look, and this time he dodged back and said many unprintable things until the next shell landed. He looked a little relieved when he came back this time. "This one was farther away," he said, "but that one afore dropped somebody's hearth-stone inside a dozen paces from my onion bed." For the next half-hour the big shells pounded the village, tearing the ruins apart, battering down the walls, blasting huge holes in the road and between the houses, re-destroying all that had already been destroyed, and completing the destruction of some of the few parts that had hitherto escaped.

Between rounds Mary ran up and looked out. Once he rushed across to his garden and came back cursing impotently, to report a shell fallen close to the garden, his carefully erected forcing frames shattered to splinters by the shock, and a hail of small stones and the ruins of an iron stove dropped obliteratingly across his carrots.

"If only they'd left this crazy shooting for another week," said Mary, "a whole lot of those things would have been ready for pulling up. The onions is pretty near big enough to eat now, and I've half a mind to pull some o' them before that cock-eyed Hun lands a shell in me garden and blows it to glory."

Later he ran out, pulled an onion, a carrot, and a lettuce, brought them back to the cellar, proudly passed them round, and anxiously demanded an opinion as to whether they were ready for pulling, and counsel as to whether he ought to strip his garden.

"Now look here!" said the sergeant at last; "you let your bloomin' garden alone; I'm not going to have you running out there plucking carrot and onion nosegays under fire. If a shell blows your garden half-way through to Australia, I can't help it, and neither can you. I'll be quite happy to split a dish of spuds with you if so be your garden offers them up; but I'm not going to have you casualtied rescuing your perishing radishes under fire. Nothing'll be said to me if your garden is strafed off the earth; but there's a whole lot going to be said if you are strafed along with it, and I have to report that you had disobeyed orders and not kept under cover, and that I had looked on while you broke ship and was blown to blazes with a boo-kay of onions in your hand. So just you anchor down there till the owner pipes to carry on."

Mary had no choice but to obey, and when at last the shelling was over he rushed to the garden and examined it with anxious care. He was in a more cheerful mood when he rejoined the others. "It ain't so bad," he said. "Total casualties, half the carrots killed, the radish-bed severely wounded (half a chimney-pot did that), and some o' the onions slightly wounded by bits of gravel. But what do you reckon the owner's going to do now? Has he given any orders yet?"

No orders had been given, but the betting amongst the Blue Marines was about ninety-seven to one in favor of their moving. Sure enough, orders were given to pack up and prepare to move as soon as it was dark, and the captain went off with a working party to reconnoiter a new position and prepare places for the cars. Mary was sent off in "the shore boat" (otherwise the light runabout which carried them on duty or pleasure to and from the ten-mile-distant town) with orders to draw the day's rations, collect the day's mail, buy the day's papers, and return to the village, being back not later than five o'clock.

It was made known that the position to which the captain contemplated moving was one in a clump of trees within half a mile of the position they were leaving. Mary was hugely satisfied. "That ain't half bad," he said when he heard. "I can walk over and water the garden at night, and pop across any time between the Tauby's usual promenade hours and do a bit o' weeding, and just keep an eye on things generally. And inside a week we're going to have carrots for dinner every day, and spring onions. Hey, my lads! what about bread and cheese and spring onions, wot?"

He climbed aboard the run-about, drove out of the yard, and rattled off down the road. He executed his commissions, and was sailing happily back to the village, when about a mile short of it a sitting figure rose from the roadside, stepped forward, and waved an arresting hand. To his surprise, Mary saw that it was one of the Blue Marines.

"What's up?" he said, as the Marine came round to the side and proceeded to step on board.

"Orders," said the Marine briefly. "I was looking out for you. Change course and direction and steer for the new anchorage."

"The idea being wot!" asked Mary.

"We've been in action again," said the Marine gloomily. "Only two shells this time, but they did more damage than all the rest put together this morning."

"More damage?" gasped Mary. "Wot—wot have they damaged?"

The Marine ticked off the damages on his fingers one by one.

"Car hit, badly damaged, and down by the stern; gun out of action—mounting smashed; the sergeant hit, piece of his starboard leg carried away; and five men slightly wounded."

He dropped his hands, which Mary took as a sign that the tally was finished. "Is that all?" he said, and breathed a sigh of relief. "Strewth! I thought you was going to tell me that my garden had been gott-straffed."



A FRAGMENT

This is not a story, it is rather a fragment, beginning where usually a battle story ends, with a man being "casualtied," showing the principal character only in a passive part—a very passive part—and ending, I am afraid, with a lot of unsatisfactory loose ends ungathered up. I only tell it because I fancy that at the back of it you may find some hint of the spirit that has helped the British Army in many a tight corner.

Private Wally Ruthven was knocked out by the bursting of a couple of bombs in his battalion's charge on the front line German trenches. Any account of the charge need not be given here, except that it failed, and the battalion making it, or what was left of them, beaten back. Private Wally knew nothing of this, knew nothing of the renewed British bombardment, the renewed British attack half a dozen hours later, and again its renewed failure. All this time he was lying where the force of the bomb's explosion had thrown him, in a hole blasted out of the ground by a bursting shell. During all that time he was unconscious of anything except pain, although certainly he had enough of that to keep his mind very fully occupied. He was brought back to an agonizing consciousness by the hurried grip of strong hands and a wrenching lift that poured liquid flames of pain through every nerve in his mangled body. To say that he was badly wounded hardly describes the case; an R.A.M.C. orderly afterwards described his appearance with painful picturesqueness as "raw meat on a butcher's block," and indeed it is doubtful if the stretcher-bearers who lifted him from the shell-hole would not rather have left him lying there and given their brief time and badly needed services to a casualty more promising of recovery, if they had seen at first Private Ruthven's serious condition. As it was, one stretcher-bearer thought and said the man was dead, and was for tipping him off the stretcher again. Ruthven heard that and opened his eyes to look at the speaker, although at the moment it would not have troubled him much if he had been tipped off again. But the other stretcher-bearer said there was still life in him; and partly because the ground about them was pattering with bullets, and the air about them clamant and reverberating with the rush and roar of passing and exploding shells and bombs, and that particular spot, therefore, no place or time for argument; partly because stretcher-bearers have a stubborn conviction and fundamental belief—which, by the way, has saved many a life even against their own momentary judgment—that while there is life there is hope, that a man "isn't dead till he's buried," and finally that a stretcher must always be brought in with a load, a live one if possible, and the nearest thing to alive if not, they brought him in.

The stretcher-bearers carried their burden into the front trench and there attempted to set about the first bandaging of their casualty. The job, however, was quite beyond them, but one of them succeeded in finding a doctor, who in all the uproar of a desperate battle was playing Mahomet to the mountain of such cases as could not come to him in the field dressing station. The orderly requested the doctor to come to the casualty, who was so badly wounded that "he near came to bits when we lifted him." The doctor, who had several urgent cases within arm's length of him as he worked at the moment, said that he would come as soon as he could, and told the orderly in the meantime to go and bandage any minor wounds his casualty might have. The bearer replied that there were no minor wounds, that the man was "just nothing but one big wound all over"; and as for bandaging, that he "might as well try to do first aid on a pound of meat that had run through a mincing machine." The doctor at last, hobbling painfully and leaning on the stretcher-bearer—for he himself had been twice wounded, once in the foot by a piece of shrapnel, and once through the tip of the shoulder by a rifle bullet—came to Private Ruthven. He spent a good deal of time and innumerable yards of bandages on him, so that when the stretcher-bearers brought him into the dressing station there was little but bandages to be seen of him. The stretcher-bearer delivered a message from the doctor that there was very little hope, so that Ruthven for the time being was merely given an injection of morphia and put aside.

The approaches to the dressing station and the station itself were under so severe a fire for some hours afterwards that it was impossible for any ambulance to be brought near it. Such casualties as could walk back walked, others were carried slowly and painfully to a point which the ambulances had a fair sporting chance of reaching intact. One way and another a good many hours passed before Ruthven's turn came to be removed. The doctor who had bandaged him in the firing-line had by then returned to the dressing station, mainly because his foot had become too painful to allow him to use it at all. Merely as an aside, and although it has nothing to do with Private Ruthven's case, it may be worth mentioning that the same doctor, having cleaned, sterilized, and bandaged his wounds, remained in the dressing station for another twelve hours, doing such work as could be accomplished sitting in a chair and with one sound and one unsound arm. He saw Private Ruthven for a moment as he was being started on his journey to the ambulance; he remembered the case, as indeed everyone who handled or saw that case remembered it for many days, and, moved by professional interest and some amazement that the man was still alive, he hobbled from his chair to look at him. He found Private Ruthven returning his look; for the passing of time and the excess of pain had by now overcome the effects of the morphia injection. There was a hauntingly appealing look in the eyes that looked up at him, and the doctor tried to answer the question he imagined those eyes would have conveyed.

"I don't know, my boy," he said, "whether you'll pull through, but we'll do the best we can for you. And now we have you here we'll have you back in hospital in no time, and there you'll get every chance there is."

He imagined the question remained in those eyes still unsatisfied, and that Ruthven gave just the suggestion of a slow head-shake.

"Don't give up, my boy," he said briskly. "We might save you yet. Now I'm going to take away the pain for you," and he called an orderly to bring a hypodermic injection. While he was finding a place among the bandages to make the injection, the orderly who was waiting spoke: "I believe, sir, he's trying to ask something or say something."

It has to be told here that Private Ruthven could say nothing in the terms of ordinary speech, and would never be able to do so again. Without going into details it will be enough to say that the whole lower part of—well, his face—was tightly bound about with bandages, leaving little more than his nostrils, part of his cheeks, and his eyes clear. He was frowning now and again, just shaking his head to denote a negative, and his left hand, bound to the bigness of a football in bandages, moved slowly in an endeavor to push aside the doctor's hands.

"It's all right, my lad," the doctor said soothingly. "I'm not going to hurt you."

The frown cleared for an instant and the eloquent eyes appeared to smile, as indeed the lad might well have smiled at the thought that anyone could "hurt" such a bundle of pain. But although it appeared quite evident that Ruthven did not want morphia, the doctor in his wisdom decreed otherwise, and the jolting journey down the rough shell-torn road, and the longer but smoother journey in the sweetly-sprung motor ambulance, were accomplished in sleep.

When he wakened again to consciousness he lay for some time looking about him, moving only his eyes and very slowly his head. He took in the canvas walls and roof of the big hospital marquee, the scarlet-blanketed beds, the flitting figures of a couple of silent-footed Sisters, the screens about two of the beds; the little clump of figures, doctor, orderlies, and Sister, stooped over another bed. Presently he caught the eye of a Sister as she passed swiftly the foot of his bed, and she, seeing the appealing look, the barely perceptible upward twitch of his head that was all he could do to beckon, stopped and turned, and moved quickly to his side. She smoothed the pillow about his head and the sheets across his shoulders, and spoke softly.

"I wonder if there is anything you want?" she said. "You can't tell me, can you? just close your eyes a minute if there is anything I can do. Shut them for yes—keep them open for no."

The eyes closed instantly, opened, and stared upward at her.

"Is it the pain?" she said. "Is it very dreadful?"

The eyes held steady and unflickering upon hers. She knew well that there they did not speak truth, and that the pain must indeed be very dreadful.

"We can stop the pain, you know," she said "Is that what you want?"

The steady unwinking eyes answered "No" again, and to add emphasis to it the bandaged head shook slowly from side to side on the pillow.

The Sister was puzzled; she could find out what he wanted, of course, she was confident of that; but it might take some time and many questions, and time just then was something that she or no one else in the big clearing hospital could find enough of for the work in their hands. Even then urgent work was calling her; so she left him, promising to come again as soon as she could.

She spoke to the doctor, and presently he came back with her to the bedside. "It's marvelous," he said in a low tone to the Sister, "that he has held on to life so long."

Private Ruthven's wounds had been dressed there on arrival, before he woke out of the morphia sleep, and the doctor had seen and knew.

"There is nothing we can do for him," he said, "except morphia again, to ease him out of his pain."

But again the boy, his brow wrinkling with the effort, attempted with his bandaged hand to stay the needle in the doctor's fingers.

"I'm sure," said the Sister, "he doesn't want the morphia; he told me so, didn't you?" appealing to the boy.

The eyes shut and gripped tight in an emphatic answer, and the Sister explained their code.

"Listen!" she said gently. "The doctor will only give you enough to make you sleep for two or three hours, and then I shall have time to come and talk to you. Will that do!"

The unmoving eyes answered "No" again, and the doctor stood up.

"If he can bear it, Sister," he said, "we may as well leave him. I can't understand it, though. I know how those wounds must hurt."

They left him then, and he lay for another couple of hours, his eyes set on the canvas roof above his head, dropped for an instant to any passing figure, lifting again to their fixed position. The eyes and the mute appeal in them haunted the Sister, and half a dozen times, as she moved about the beds, she flitted over to him, just to drop a word that she had not forgotten and she was coming presently.

"You want me to talk to you, don't you?" she said. "There is something you want me to find out?"

"Yes—yes—yes," said the quickly flickering eyelids.

The Sister read the label that was tied to him when he was brought in. She asked questions round the ward of those who were able to answer them, and sent an orderly to make inquiries in the other tents. He came back presently and reported the finding of another man who belonged to Ruthven's regiment and who knew him. So presently, when she was relieved from duty—the first relief for thirty-six solid hours of physical stress and heart-tearing strain—she went straight to the other tent and questioned the man who knew Private Ruthven. He had a hopelessly shattered arm, but appeared mightily content and amazingly cheerful. He knew Wally, he said, was in the same platoon with him; didn't know much about him except that he was a very decent sort; no, knew nothing about his people or his home, although he remembered—yes, there was a girl. Wally had shown him her photograph once, "and a real ripper she is too." Didn't know if Wally was engaged to her, or anything more about her, and certainly not her name.

The Sister went back to Wally. His wrinkled brow cleared at the sight of her, but she could see that the eyes were sunk more deeply in his head, that they were dulled, no doubt with his suffering.

"I'm going to ask you a lot of questions," she said, "and you'll just close your eyes again if I speak of what you want to tell me. You do want to tell me something, don't you?"

To her surprise, the "Yes" was not signaled back to her. She was puzzled a moment. "You want to ask me something?" she said.

"Yes," the eyelids flicked back.

"Is it about a girl?" she asked. ("No.")

"Is it about money of any sort?" ("No.")

"Is it about your mother, or your people, or your home? Is it about yourself?"

She had paused after each question and went on to the next, but seeing no sign of answering "Yes" she was baffled for a moment. But she felt that she could not go to her own bed to which she had been dismissed, could not go to the sleep she so badly needed, until she had found and answered the question in those pitiful eyes. She tried again.

"Is it about your regiment?" she asked, and the eyes snapped "Yes," and "Yes," and "Yes" again. She puzzled over that, and then went back to the doctor in charge of the other ward and brought back with her the man who "knew Wally." Mentally she clapped her hands at the light that leaped to the boy's eyes. She had told the man that it was something about the regiment he wanted to know; told him, too, his method of answering "Yes" and "No," and to put his questions in such, a form that they could be so answered.

The friend advanced to the bedside with clumsy caution.

"Hello, Wally!" he said cheerfully. "They've pretty well chewed you up and spit you out again, 'aven't they? But you're all right, old son, you're going to pull through, 'cause the O.C. o' the Linseed Lancers[Footnote: Medical Service.] here told me so. But Sister here tells me you want to ask something about someone in the old crush." He hesitated a moment. "I can't think who it would be," he confessed. "It can't be his own chum, 'cause he 'stopped one,' and Wally saw it and knew he was dead hours before. But look 'ere," he said determinedly, "I'll go through the whole bloomin' regiment, from the O.C. down to the cook, by name and one at a time, and you'll tip me a wink and stop me at the right one. I'll start off with our own platoon first; that ought to do it," he said to the Sister.

"Perhaps," she said quickly, "he wants to ask about one of his officers. Is that it?" And she turned to him.

The eyes looked at her long and steadily, and then closed flutteringly and hesitatingly.

"We're coming near it," she said, "although he didn't seem sure about that 'Yes.'"

"Look 'ere," said the other, with a sudden inspiration, "there's no good o' this 'Yes' and 'No' guessin' game; Wally and me was both in the flag-wagging class, and we knows enough to—there you are." He broke off in triumph and nodded to Wally's flickering eyelids, that danced rapidly in the long and short of the Morse code.

"Y-e-s. Ac-ac-ac."[Footnote: Ac-ac-ac: three A's, denoting a full stop. In "Signalese" similar-sounding letters are given names to avoid confusion. A is Ac; T, Toe; D, Don; P, Pip; M, Emma, etc.]

"Yes," he said. "If you'll get a bit of paper, Sister, you can write down the message while I spells it off. That's what you want, ain't it, chum?"

The Sister took paper and pencil and wrote the letters one by one as the code ticked them off and the reader called them to her.

"Ready. Begins!" Go on, Miss, write it down," as she hesitated. "Don-I-Don—Did; W-E—we; Toc-ac-K-E—take; Toc-H-E—the; Toc-R-E-N-C-H—trench; ac-ac-ac. Did we take the trench?"

The signaler being a very unimaginative man, possibly it might never have occurred to him to lie, to have told anything but the blunt truth that they did not take the trench; that the regiment had been cut to pieces in the attempt to take it; that the further attempt of another regiment on the same trench had been beaten back with horrible loss; that the lines on both sides, when he was sent to the rear late at night, were held exactly as they had been held before the attack; that the whole result of the action was nil—except for the casualty list. But he caught just in time the softly sighing whispered "Yes" from the unmoving lips of the Sister, and he lied promptly and swiftly, efficiently and at full length.

"Yes," he said. "We took it. I thought you knew that, and that you was wounded the other side of it; we took it all right. Got a hammering of course, but what was left of us cleared it with the bayonet. You should 'ave 'eard 'em squeal when the bayonet took 'em. There was one big brute——"

He was proceeding with a cheerful imagination, colored by past experiences, when the Sister stopped him. Wally's eyes were closed.

"I think," she said quietly, "that's all that Wally wants to know. Isn't it, Wally?"

The lids lifted slowly and the Sister could have cried at the glory and satisfaction that shone in them. They closed once softly, lifted slowly, and closed again tiredly and gently. That is all. Wally died an hour afterwards.



AN OPEN TOWN

"Yesterday hostile artillery shelled the town of —— some miles behind our lines, without military result. Several civilians were killed."—EXTRACT FROM DESPATCH.

Two officers were cashing checks in the Bank of France and chatting with the cashier, who was telling them about a bombardment of the town the day before. The bank had removed itself and its business to the underground vaults, and the large room on the ground floor, with its polished mahogany counters, brass grills and desks, loomed dim and indistinct in the light which filtered past the sandbags piled outside. The walls bore notices with a black hand pointing downwards to the cellar steps, and the big room echoed eerily to the footsteps of customers, who tramped across the tiled floor and disappeared downstairs to the vaults.

"One shell," the cashier was saying, "fell close outside there," waving a hand up the cellar steps. "Bang! crash! we feel the building shake—so." His hands left their task of counting notes, seized an imaginary person by the lapels of an imaginary coat and shook him violently.

"The noise, the great c-r-rash, the shoutings, the little squeals, and then the peoples running, the glasses breaking—tinkle—tinkle—you have seen the smoke, thick black smoke, and smelling—pah!"

He wrinkled his nose with disgust. "At first—for one second—I think the bank is hit; but no, it is the street outside. Little stones—yes, and splinters, through the windows; they come and hit all round, inside—rap, rap, rap!" His darting hand played the splinters' part, indicating with little pointing stabs the ceiling and the walls. "Mademoiselle there, you see? yes! one little piece of shell," and he held finger and thumb to illustrate an inch-long fragment.

The two officers looked at Mademoiselle, an exceedingly pretty young girl, sitting composedly at a typewriter. There was a strip of plaster marring the smooth cheek, and at the cashier's words she looked round at the young officers, flashed them a cheerful smile, and returned to her hammering on the key-board.

"My word, Mademoiselle," said one of the officers. "Near thing, eh? I wonder you are not scared to carry on."

The girl turned a slightly puzzled glance on them.

"Monsieur means," explained the cashier friendlily to her, "is it that you have no fear—peur, to continue the affairs?"

Mademoiselle smiled brightly and shook her head. "But no," she said cheerfully, "it is nossings," and went back to her work.

"Jolly plucky girl, I think," said the officer. "Nearly as plucky as she is pretty. I say, old man, my French isn't up to handling a compliment like that; see if you can—"

He did not finish the sentence, for at that moment there was a faint far-off bang, and they sensed rather than felt a faint quiver in the solid earth beneath their feet. The cashier held up one hand and stood with head turned sideways in an attitude of listening.

"You hear?" he said, arching his eyebrows.

"What was it?" said the officer. "Sounded like a door banging upstairs."

"No, no," said the cashier. "They have commenced again. It is the same hour as last time, and the time before."

Mademoiselle had stopped typing, and the ledger clerk at the desk behind her had also ceased work and sat listening; but after a moment Mademoiselle threw a little smile towards them—a half-pleased, half-deprecating little smile, as of one who shows a visitor something interesting, something one is glad to show, and then resumed her clicking on the typewriter. The ledger clerk, too, went back to work, and the cashier said off-handedly: "It is not near—the station perhaps—yes!" as if the station were a few hundred miles off, instead of a few hundred yards. He finished rapidly counting his bundle of notes and handed them to the officer.

When the two emerged from the bank they found the street a good deal quieter than when they had entered it. They walked along towards the main square, noticing that some of the shopkeepers were calmly putting up their shutters, while others quietly continued serving the few customers who were hurriedly completing their purchases. As the two walked along the narrow street they heard the thin savage whistle of an approaching shell and a moment later a tremendous bang! They and everybody else near them stopped and looked round, up and down the street, and up over the roofs of the houses. They could see nothing, and had turned to walk on when something crashed sharply on a roof above them, bounced off, and fell with a rap on the cobble-stones in the street. A child, an eager-faced youngster, ran from an arched gateway and pounced on the little object, rose, and held up a piece of stone, with intense annoyance and disgust plainly written on his face, threw it from him with an exclamation of disappointment.

The two walked on chuckling. "Little bounder!" said one. "Thought he'd got a souvenir; rather a sell for him—what?"

In the main square, they found a number of market women packing up their little stalls and moving off, others debating volubly and looking up at the sky, pointing in the direction of the last sound, and clearly arguing with each other as to whether they should stay or move. A couple of Army Transport wagons clattered across the square. One driver, with the reins bunched up in his hand and the whip under his arm, was busily engaged striking matches and trying to light a cigarette; the other, allowing his horses to follow the first wagon, and with his mouth open, gazed up into the sky as if he expected to see the next shell coming. A few civilians scattered about the square were walking briskly; a woman, clutching the arm of a little boy, ran, dragging him, with his little legs going at a rapid trot. More civilians, a few men in khaki, and some in French uniform, were standing in archways or in shop-doors.

There was another long whistle, louder and harsher this time, and followed by a splintering crash and rattle. The groups in the doorways flicked out of sight; the people in the open half halted and turned to hurry on, or in some cases, without looking round, ran hurriedly to cover. Stones and little fragments of debris clacked down one by one, and then in a little pattering shower on the stones of the square. The last of the market women, hesitating no longer, hurriedly bundled up their belongings and hastened off. The two officers turned into a cafe with a wide front window, seated themselves near this at a little marble table, and ordered beer. There were about a score of officers in the room, talking or reading the English papers. All of them had very clean and very close-shaven faces, and very dirty and weather-stained, mud-marked clothes. For the most part they seemed a great deal more interested in each other, in their conversations, and in their papers, than in any notice of the bombardment. The two who were seated near the window had a good view from it, and extracted plenty of interest from watching the people outside.

Another shell whistled and roared down, burst with a deep angry bellow, a clattering and rending and splintering sound of breaking stone and wood. This time bigger fragments of stone, a shower of broken tiles and slates rattled down into the square; a thick cloud of dirty black smoke, gray and red tinged with mortar and brick-dust, appeared up above the roofs on the other side of the square, spread slowly and thickly, and hung long, dissolving very gradually and thinning off in trailing wisps.

In the cafe there was silence for a moment, and many remarks about "coming rather close" and "getting a bit unhealthy," and a jesting inquiry of the proprietor as to the shelter available in the cellar with the beer barrels. A few rose and moved over to the window; one or two opened the door, to stand there and look round.

"Look at that old girl in the doorway across there," said one. "You would think she was frightened she was going to get her best bonnet wet."

The woman's motions had, in fact, a curious resemblance to those of one who hesitated about venturing out in a heavy rainstorm. She stood in the doorway and looked round, drew back and spoke to someone inside, picked up a heavy basket, set it down, stepped into the door, glanced carefully and calculatingly up at the sky and across the square in the direction she meant to take, moved back again and picked up her basket, set it firmly on her arm, stepped out and commenced to hobble at an ungainly cumbersome trot across the square. She was no more than half-way across when the shriek of another shell was heard approaching. She stopped and cast a terrified glance about her, dumped the basket down on the cobbles, and resumed the shambling trot at increased speed. A soldier in khaki crossing the square also commenced to run for cover as his ear caught the sound of the shell; passing near the woman's basket, he stooped and grabbed it and doubled on with it after its panting owner.

A group of soldiers standing in the archway shouted laughter and encouragement, pretending they were watching a race, urging on the runners.

"Go on, Khaki! go on!—two to one on the fat girl; two to one—I lay the fie-ald." Their cries and clapping shut off, and they disappeared like diving ducks as the shell roared down, struck with a horrible crash one of the buildings in a side-street just off the square, burst it open, and flung upward and outward a flash of blinding light, a spurt of smoke, a torrent of flying bricks and broken stones. Through the rattle and clatter of falling masonry and flying rubbish there came, piercing and shrill, the sound of a woman's screams. They choked off suddenly, and for some seconds there were no sounds but those of falling fragments, jarring and hailing on the cobble-stones, of broken glass crashing and tinkling from dozens of windows round the square.

As the noises of the explosion died away, figures crowded out anxiously into the doorways again, and stood there and about the pavements, looking round, pointing and gesticulating, and plainly prepared to run back under cover at the first sign of warning. The half-dozen men who had cheered the race across the square emerged from the archway, looked around, and then set off running, keeping close under the shelter of the houses, and disappearing into the thick smoke and dust that still hung a thick and writhing curtain about the street-end in the corner of the square.

The two officers who had sat at the cafe window looked at one another.

"You heard that squeal?" said one.

"Yes," said the other; "I think we might trot over. You knowing a little bit about surgery might be useful."

"Oh, I dunno," said the first. "But, anyhow, let's go."

They paid their bill and went out, and as they crossed the square they met a couple of the soldiers who had disappeared into the smoke. They were moving at the double, but at a word from the officers they halted. Both wore the Red Cross badge of the Army Medical Corps on their arms, and one explained hurriedly that they were going for an ambulance, that there was a woman killed, one man and a woman and two children badly wounded. They ran on, and the two officers moved hastily towards the shell-struck house. The smoke was clearing now, and it was possible to see something of the damage that had been done.

The shell apparently had struck the roof, had ripped and torn it off, burst downwards and outwards, blowing out the whole face of the upper story, the connecting-wall and corner of the houses next to it, part of the top-floor, and a jagged gap in the face of the lower story. The street was piled with broken bricks and tiles, with splinters of stone, with uprooted cobbles, with fragments and beams, bits of furniture, ragged-edged planks, fragments of smoldering cloth. As the two walked, their feet crunched on a layer of splintered glass and broken crockery. The air they breathed reeked with a sharp chemical odor and the stench of burning rags.

The R.A.M.C. men had collected the casualties, and were doing what they could for them, and the officer who was "a bit of a surgeon" gave them what help he could. The casualties were mangled cruelly, and one of them, a child, died before the ambulance came.

The shells began to come fast now. One after another they poured in, the last noise of their approach before they struck sounding like the rush and roar of an express train passing through a tunnel. No more fell near the square; but the two officers, returning across it, with the terrifying rush of its projectiles in their ears, moved hastily and puffed sighs of relief as they reached the door of the cafe again.

"I just about want a drink," said the one who was "a bit of a surgeon." "Thank Heaven I didn't decide to go into the Medical. The more I see of that job the less I like it."

The other shuddered. "How these surgeons do it at all," he said, "beats me. I had to go outside when you started to handle that kiddie. Sorry I couldn't stay to help you."

"It didn't matter," said the first. "Those Medical fellows did all I wanted, and anyhow you were better employed giving a hand to stop that building catching light."

The two had their drink and prepared to move again.

"Time we were off, I suppose," said the first. "Our lot must be getting ready to take the road presently, and we ought to be there."

So they moved and dodged through the quiet streets, with the shells still whooping overhead and bursting noisily in different parts of the town. On their way they entered a shop to buy some slabs of chocolate. The shop was empty when they entered, but a few stout raps on the counter brought a woman, pale-faced but volubly chattering, up a ladder and through a trapdoor in the shop-floor. She served them while the shells still moaned overhead, talking rapidly, apologizing for keeping them waiting, and explaining that for the children's sake she always went down into the cellar when the shelling commenced, wishing them, as they gathered up their parcels and left, "bonne chance," and making for the trap-door and the ladder as they closed the shop-door.

About the main streets there were few signs of the shells' work, except here and there a litter of fragments tossed over the roofs and sprayed across the road. But, passing through a small side square, the two officers saw something more of the effect of "direct hits." In the square was parked a number of ambulance wagons, and over a building at the side floated a huge Red Cross flag. Eight or nine shells had been dropped in and around the square. Where they had fallen were huge round holes, each with a scattered fringe of earth and cobble-stones and broken pavement. The trees lining the square showed big white patches on their trunks where the bark had been sliced by flying fragments, branches broken, hanging and dangling, or holding out jagged white stumps. Leaves and twigs and branches were littered about the square and heaped thick under the trees. The brick walls of many of the houses round were pitted and pocked and scarred by the shell fragments. The face of one house was marked by a huge splash, with solid center and a ragged-edged outline of radiating jerky rays, reminding one immediately of a famous ink-maker's advertisement. The bricks had taken the impression of the explosion's splash exactly as paper would take the ink's. Practically every window in the square had been broken, and in the case of the splash-marked house, blown in, sash and frame complete. One ambulance wagon lay a torn and splintered wreck, and pieces of it were flung wide to the four corners of the square. Another was overturned, with broken wheels collapsed under it, and in the Red Cross canvas tilts of others gaped huge tears and rents.

At one spot a pool of blood spread wide across the pavement, and still dripping and running sluggishly and thickly into and along the stone gutter, showed where at least one shell had caught more than brick and stone and tree, although now the square was deserted and empty of life.

And even as the two hurriedly skirted the place another shell hurtled over, tripped on the top edge of a roof across the square and exploded with an appalling clatter and burst of noise. The roof vanished in a whirlwind of smoke and dust, and the officers jumped from the doorway where they had flung themselves crouching, and finished their passage of the square at a run.

"Hottish corner," said one, as they slowed to a walk some distance away.

"Silly fools," growled the other. "What do they want to hoist that huge Red Cross flag up there for, where any airman can see it? Fairly asking for it, I call it."

When they came to the outskirts of the town they found rather more signs of life. People were hanging about their doorways and the shops, fewer windows were shuttered, fewer faces peeped from the tiny grated windows of the cellars. And up the center of the road, with lordly calm, marched three Highlanders. The smooth swing of their kilts, their even, unhurried step, the shoulders well back, and the elbows a shade outturned, the bonnets cocked to a precisely same angle on the upheld heads, all bespoke either an amazing ignorance of, or a bland indifference to, the bombardment. Their march was stopped by a sentry, who shouted to them and moved out from the pavement. Some sort of argument was going on as the officers approached, and in passing they heard the finish of it.

"You were pit there tae warn folk," a Highlander was saying. "Weel, ye've dune that, so we'll awa on oor road. We're nae fonder o' shells than y'are yersel. But we'd look bonnie, wouldn't we, t' be tellin' the Cameron lads we promised to meet, that we were feared for a bit shellin'...."

And after they had passed, the officers looked back and saw the three Scots swinging their kilts and swaggering imperturbably on to the town, and their meeting with the "Cameron lads."

There were no more shells, but that afternoon a Taube paid another of its frequent visits and vigorously bombed the railway station again, driving the inhabitants back once more to the inadequate shelter of their cellars and basements. And yet, as the same two officers marched with their battalion through the town towards the firing-line that evening, they found the streets quite normally bustling and astir, and there seemed to be no lack of light in the shops and houses and about the streets. Here and there as they passed, children stood stiffly to attention and gravely saluted the battalion, young women and old turned to call a cheery "Bonne Chance" to the soldiers, to smile bravely and wave farewells to them.

"Plucky bloomin' lot, ain't they, Bill?" said one man, and blew a kiss to three girls waving from a window.

"I takes off my 'at to them," said his mate. "What wi' Jack Johnsons and airyplane bombs, you might expec' the population to have emigrated in a bunch. The Frenchmen is a plucky enough crowd, but the women—My Lord."

"Airyplanes every other day," said the first man. "But I don't notice any darkened streets and white-painted kerbs; and we don't 'ear the inhabitants shrieking about protection from air raids, or 'Where's the anti-aircraft guns?' or 'Who's responsible for air defense?' or 'A baa the Government that don't a baa the air raids!' 'say la gerr,' says they, and shrugs their shoulders, and leaves it go at that."

They were in a darker side-street now, and the glare of the burning house shone red in the sky over the roof tops. "Somebody's 'appy 'ome gone west," remarked one man, and a mouth-organ in the ranks answered, with cheerful sarcasm, "Keep the Home Fires Burning!"



THE SIGNALERS

"It is reported that ... "—EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH.

The "it" and the "that" which were reported, and which the despatch related in another three or four lines, concerned the position of a forward line of battle, but have really nothing to do with this account, which aims only at relating something of the method by which "it was reported" and the men whose particular work was concerned only with the report as a report, a string of words, a jumble of letters, a huddle of Morse dots and dashes.

The Signaling Company in the forward lines was situated in a very damp and very cold cellar of a half-destroyed house. In it were two or three tables commandeered from upstairs or from some houses around. That one was a rough deal kitchen table, and that another was of polished wood, with beautiful inlaid work and artistic curved and carven legs, the spoils of some drawing-room apparently, was a matter without the faintest interest to the signalers who used them. To them a table was a table, no more and no less, a thing to hold a litter of papers, message forms, telephone gear, and a candle stuck in a bottle. If they had stopped to consider the matter, and had been asked, they would probably have given a dozen of the delicate inlaid tables for one of the rough strong kitchen ones. There were three or four chairs about the place, just as miscellaneous in their appearance as the tables. But beyond the tables and chairs there was no furniture whatever, unless a scanty heap of wet straw in one corner counts as furniture, which indeed it might well do since it counted as a bed.

There were fully a dozen men in the room, most of them orderlies for the carrying of messages to and from the telephonists. These men came and went continually. Outside it had been raining hard for the greater part of the day, and now, getting on towards midnight, the drizzle still held and the trenches and fields about the signalers' quarters were running wet, churned into a mass of gluey chalk-and-clay mud. The orderlies coming in with messages were daubed thick with the wet mud from boot-soles to shoulders, often with their puttees and knees and thighs dripping and running water as if they had just waded through a stream. Those who by the carrying of a message had just completed a turn of duty, reported themselves, handed over a message perhaps, slouched wearily over to the wall farthest from the door, dropped on the stone floor, bundled up a pack or a haversack, or anything else convenient for a pillow, lay down and spread a wet mackintosh over them, wriggled and composed their bodies into the most comfortable, or rather the least uncomfortable possible position, and in a few minutes were dead asleep.

It was nothing to them that every now and again the house above them shook and quivered to the shock of a heavy shell exploding somewhere on the ground round the house, that the rattle of rifle fire dwindled away at times to separate and scattered shots, brisked up again and rose to a long roll, the devil's tattoo of the machine guns rattling through it with exactly the sound a boy makes running a stick rapidly along a railing. The bursting shells and scourging rifle fire, sweeping machine guns, banging grenades and bombs were all affairs with which the Signaling Company in the cellar had no connection. For the time being the men in a row along the wall were as unconcerned in the progress of the battle as if they were safely and comfortably asleep in London. Presently any or all of them might be waked and sent out into the flying death and dangers of the battlefield, but in the meantime their immediate and only interest was in getting what sleep they could. Every once in a while the signalers' sergeant would shout for a man, go across to the line and rouse one of the sleepers; then the awakened man would sit up and blink, rise and listen to his instructions, nod and say, "Yes, Sergeant! All right, Sergeant!" when these were completed, pouch his message, hitch his damp mackintosh about him and button it close, drag heavily across the stone floor and vanish into the darkness of the stone-staired passage.

His journey might be a long or a short one, he might only have to find a company commander in the trenches one or two hundred yards away, he might on the other hand have a several hours' long trudge ahead of him, a bewildering way to pick through the darkness across a maze of fields and a net-work of trenches, over and between the rubble heaps that represented the remains of a village, along roads pitted with all sorts of blind traps in the way of shell holes, strings of barbed wire, overturned carts, broken branches of trees, flung stones and beams; and always, whether his journey was a short one or a long, he would move in an atmosphere of risk, with sudden death or searing pain passing him by at every step, and waiting for him, as he well knew, at the next step and the next and every other one to his journey's end.

Each man who took his instructions and pocketed his message and walked up the cellar steps knew that he might never walk down them again, that he might not take a dozen paces from them before the bullet found him. He knew that its finding might come in black dark and in the middle of an open field, that it might drop him there and leave him for the stretcher-bearers to find some time, or for the burying party to lift any time. Each man who carried out a message was aware that he might never deliver it, that when some other hand did so, and the message was being read, he might be past all messages, lying stark and cold in the mud and filth with the rain beating on his gray unheeding face; or, on the other hand, that he might be lying warm and comfortable in the soothing ease of a bed in the hospital train, swaying gently and lulled by the song of the flying wheels, the rock and roll of the long compartment, swinging at top speed down the line to the base and the hospital ship and home. An infinity of possibilities lay between the two extremes. They were undoubtedly the two extremes: the death that each man hoped to evade, the wound whose painful prospect held no slightest terror but only rather the deep satisfaction of a task performed, of an escape from death at the cheap price of a few days' or weeks' pain, or even a crippled limb or a broken body.

A man forgot all these things when he came down the cellar steps and crept to a corner to snatch what sleep he could, but remembered them again only when he was wakened and sent out into their midst, and into all the toils and terrors the others had passed, or were to go into or even then were meeting.

The signalers at the instruments, the sergeants who gathered them in and sent them forth, gave little or no thought to the orderlies. These men were hardly more than shadows, things which brought them long screeds to be translated to the tapping keys, hands which would stretch into the candle-light and lift the messages that had just "buzzed" in over their wires. The sergeant thought of them mostly as a list of names to be ticked off one by one in a careful roster as each man did his turn of duty, went out, or came back and reported in. And the man who sent messages these men bore may never have given a thought to the hands that would carry them, unless perhaps to wonder vaguely whether the message could get through from so and so to such and such, from this map square to that, and if the chance of the messages getting through—the message you will note, not the messenger—seemed extra doubtful, orders might be given to send it in duplicate or triplicate, to double or treble the chances of its arriving.

The night wore on, the orderlies slept and woke, stumbled in and out; the telephonists droned out in monotonous voices to the telephone, or "buzzed" even more monotonous strings of longs and shorts on the "buzzer." And in the open about them, and all unheeded by them, men fought, and suffered wounds and died, or fought on in the scarce lesser suffering of cold and wet and hunger.

In the signalers' room all the fluctuations of the fight were translated from the pulsing fever, the human living tragedies and heroisms, the violent hopes and fears and anxieties of the battle line, to curt cold words, to scribbled letters on a message form. At times these messages were almost meaningless to them, or at least their red tragedy was unheeded. Their first thought when a message was handed in for transmission, usually their first question when the signaler at the other end called to take a message, was whether the message was a long one or a short one. One telephonist was handed an urgent message to send off, saying that bombs were running short in the forward line and that further supplies were required at the earliest possible moment, that the line was being severely bombed and unless they had the means to reply must be driven out or destroyed. The signaler took that message and sent it through; but his instrument was not working very clearly, and he was a good deal more concerned and his mind was much more fully taken up with the exasperating difficulty of making the signaler at the other end catch word or letter correctly, than it was with all the close packed volume of meaning it contained. It was not that he did not understand the meaning; he himself had known a line bombed out before now, the trenches rent and torn apart, the shattered limbs and broken bodies of the defenders, the horrible ripping crash of the bombs, the blinding flame, the numbing shock, the smoke and reek and noise of the explosions; but though all these things were known to him, the words "bombed out" meant no more now than nine letters of the alphabet and the maddening stupidity of the man at the other end, who would misunderstand the sound and meaning of "bombed" and had to have it in time-consuming letter-by-letter spelling.

When he had sent that message, he took off and wrote down one or two others from the signaling station he was in touch with. His own station, it will be remembered, was close up to the forward firing line, a new firing line which marked the limits of the advance made that morning. The station he was connected with was back in rear of what, previous to the attack, had been the British forward line. Between the two the thin insignificant thread of the telephone wire ran twisting across the jumble of the trenches of our old firing line, the neutral ground that had lain between the trenches, and the other maze of trench, dug-out, and bomb-proof shelter pits that had been captured from the enemy. Then in the middle of sending a message, the wire went dead, gave no answer to repeated calls on the "buzzer." The sergeant, called to consultation, helped to overlook and examine the instrument. Nothing could be found wrong with it, but to make quite sure the fault was not there, a spare instrument was coupled on to a short length of wire between it and the old one. They carried the message perfectly, so with curses of angry disgust the wire was pronounced disconnected, or "disc," as the signaler called it.