Peter Jameson returned to his unit in a very peculiar frame of mind: a mixture of gladness at having left his business annoyances behind him, regret for missed enjoyments, and determination not to allow anything that might happen at home to interfere with his work as a soldier—a determination slightly tinged with fanaticism, which did not improve his temper.

He detrained at Steenwerck, in pitch darkness, after a nine-hour train-journey; was accosted by his groom at the exit from the station.

“Hope you had a good leaf, sir.” The squat little man saluted awkwardly.

“Thanks, Jelks. Quite good. Where are the horses?”

“Just over there, sir. I tied them up to the fence.”

“Both of them all right?”

“Queen Bess had a bit of a cold, sir. Captain Horrocks made me keep her in for two days. She’s all right now.”

They made their way across shadows; untethered the horses. Peter mounted.

“Colonel told me to bring your gas-helmet, sir.” Jelks divested himself of the extra satchel he wore slung from his shoulder; handed it up to his master. “He told me to tell you, sir, with his compliments”—Jelks grinned as the Weasel had grinned when he gave the message—“orders is that both officers and men should take their gas-helmets when they go on leaf.”

Peter, rather annoyed at being called over the coals for infraction of an order nobody ever obeyed in those early days, put Little Willie to a trot. They rode, under vague starlight, through La Creche into the main Bailleul-ArmentiÈres Road; were challenged at the barrier. As they turned leftwards up the pavÉ for Neuve Eglise, a mild wind blew across their faces. Passing the low huts of Divisional Baths, a sentry saluted them. “Gas Alert, sir,” he called out.

Peter called back, “Thanks.”

At the canvas house which hid the naval gun from hostile airmen, another sentry gave the same warning. Peter slackened to a walk; summoned his groom.

“We’ll go round by Kortepyp,” he said. “It’s quicker.”

“Very good, sir. Turning’s about a hundred yards on.”

They found it; veered away from the trees into flat country. Now the wind blew direct in their faces. In front of them, VÉry lights glowed skyward, hung and disappeared silently behind the trees. “Devilish quiet,” thought Peter. Not a gun boomed, not a rifle cracked.... He seemed to catch the faint sound of a gong; halted hand-to-ear.

Again, the gas-gong belled faintly down wind; a distant gunflash winked across the darkness ahead. Then, maniacally, the countryside awoke. Sound swept back, as a wave sweeps, leaping down the valley towards them—horns shrieked, gongs dinned, whistles blew: rifle-fire crackled, burst to a roar: guns boomed dully from beyond the horizon; they caught the far crash of shell-fire. The sky blazed with electric flashes, with whitely-soaring lights, with orange hints of machine-gun flame. Hedges, trees, crest-line, sprang from shadow into silhouette. And suddenly, near and high above the silhouetted valley, soared the crimson rockets of the S.O.S. station on Hill 63; hung a moment; waking pandemonium as they drooped to ground.

A mile away among the trees, our own guns awoke, red and roaring; the flames of them cut great gashes against the sky, the voice of them drowned the far crash of shells, the crackle and sputter of rifle-fire. But shrill above the voice of the guns, Peter and Jelks heard the howling shrieking Klaxons. “Gas,” they shrieked, “Gas! Gas! Gas!”

“Better dismount, I think,” said Peter calmly. “It’s hardly likely to come as far back as this; but there’s no sense in taking risks.”

They stood, bridles over arms, watching and listening. Every now and then, Peter sniffed at the breeze. “Gas-training”—beyond the putting-on of the helmet—had not yet been invented. He felt irritatingly ignorant. How long would the stuff take to reach them? Would he be able to see it? What did it look like? Smell like? Could it kill horses?

Driver Jelks began fiddling at his satchel; extracted the clammy “P. H.” mask; shook it out; pulled it half-on, tucking up the glass eye-pieces and the rubber mouth-valve over his head. Peter saw that the man’s hands were shaking.

“Not frightened, are you?” he asked.

“I don’t mind shells, sir,”—stammered Jelks—“but this gas, it fairly puts the wind up me, sir.”

“Don’t be a damn fool, man,” said Peter gruffly. “You’re all right as long as you’ve got your helmet on.”

And then, suddenly, he saw the poison—a low gray wraith, rushing down the darkness; heard himself say, “Pull that helmet down quick”; caught a whiff as of rotten pears; closed mouth and nostrils; felt Little Willie wrench at bridle over his right arm; whipped gas-helmet out and on, stuffing the flaps of it under his collar. He found the rubber tubing with his lips; sucked on it; realized instantaneously that the valve leaked!

Now fear had its way with him. The eye-pieces blurred. To breathe meant death.... He must breathe.... His lungs would burst.... Blood drummed in his ears....

Came another wrench at bridle-rein; with it the madness of inspiration. His right hand found the peak of the saddle, his left the cantle, swung him from ground to horse.... Teeth unclenched from rubber, breath surged through mouth and nostrils.... Now death was certain. Be damned, though, if he’d die in that acrid clammy darkness....

Peter jerked up the stifling cloth; felt cool air on his eyes, sweet air in his nostrils; failed for a second to realize the miracle. Then, instinctively, he knew that his leap to horse had poised him above the heavy gas-cloud, that he was looking down on it, as a man riding the fields at dusk looks down on the ground mist.... But even as Peter looked, the tail of the poison-belt blew clear!

For a full minute, he sat his horse—motionless, amazed, still afraid to breathe. The horror had come and gone like some bestial dream. Guns were still flashing and roaring; the sky still blazed; Klaxons howled all round him. Jelks’ squat figure, cowled in its goggling mask, Queen Bess’s bridle over its arm, stood within three yards of his stirrup.

Little Willie began coughing; fidgeted for a second; stood still again.

“You can take that thing off,” said Peter.

“Beg pardon, sir,” answered a muffled voice.

“You can take that damn thing off,” roared Peter.

Fumblingly, the man removed his helmet. “Was it gas, sir?” he asked.

“Very much so,” began Peter; “and the next time you bring me a gas-helmet, I wish to Christ....” He bit off the end of the sentence. After all, the fault lay with himself, not with his man.

They waited half-an-hour; heard the shriek of the Klaxons die away to silence, the roar of the guns to an intermittent crackling.

“I think we might go on now,” said Peter. “It doesn’t seem to have hurt the horses, thank goodness.”

Nevertheless, since the wind still blew fairly from the north-east, he kept ears and nostrils a-cock as they made gingerly for Headquarters.

“That you, Jameson?” called Stark’s voice from the lighted doorway of the villa.

“Yes, sir.”—Peter dismounted—“Is Captain Horrocks up, sir?”

“Up? Everybody’s up, except our ruddy Belgian landlord. He and his wife have got their respirators on, their heads under the bed clothes, and the fear of God in ’em. Why do you want Horrocks?”

The Weasel looked a quaint figure. His red hair was still towzled with sleep. He wore a “British Warm” coat over silk pyjamas, striped white and crimson, rather short in the leg, and heelless slippers of red morocco-leather. From his bare neck depended a vast respirator (one of the earliest experiments in that direction), whose square box—thick tube hanging down like a diminutive elephant-trunk—bobbed at his chest whenever he spoke.

“I’m afraid the horses got a whiff or two of that damn stuff, sir,” explained Peter. “Oh, and thank you very much for sending me my helmet.”

“Some sense in Corps Orders occasionally,” said the Weasel grimly. “I told Mr. Black to pick you out a new one. Hope it was all right.”

Peter, not wishing to make trouble, kept silence. Horrocks, also in pyjamas, appeared clutching a whisky-and-soda; fingered his moustaches professionally; gave it as his opinion that gas, except in very large quantities, had no effect on horses. Peter dismissed Jelks; and the three passed into the Mess-Room.

Dr. Carson, in mauve and yellow pyjamas, gas-helmet perched drunkenly on his white hair, was just opening a potted tongue. Purves, fully dressed except for his tie, and very affairÉ, stood tracing imaginary lines on the large-scale map above the mantelpiece. Morency, barefoot in unlaced breeches and striped vest, held a huge bottle of Perrier in one hand, a tin of sardines in the other.

Came a rap at the panelled door, a breathless signaller: “Ack Battery report infantry asking for retaliation, sorr. They have begun firing, sorr. And they want to know if Gas Alert has been cancelled, sorr. I told them it had not been cancelled, sorr....”

“Better go and see what they want, P.J.,” Stark nodded to his Adjutant. “Doesn’t look as though we shall get much sleep tonight.”

And as a matter of cold fact, it was 5:0 a. m. on the morning of his return from leave to that “cushy” spot Neuve Eglise, before Peter at last crawled between his Jaeger blankets.

“Wonder if Pat’s awake,” he thought....