“God, P.J., this is too damned awful.”

Sandiland stretched grimed fingers across the bacon-box which served for table; jerked a Gold-flake from its tin; lit it shakily at the guttering candle.

“Pretty bad,” admitted Peter: but his hand too shook as he tilted the whisky-bottle into his tin mug. “Better have some of this.”

A shell whistled over the dripping corrugated-iron above their heads, burst hollowly on the twisted railway behind.

“Blast that gun,” said Sandiland....

They had been in action for eighteen days; and not once during that time had “B” battery’s guns been wholly silent. Of the men who had served those guns so blithely under the trees of Neuve Eglise barely one-third remained. Sergeant Ackroyd was dead, breast riven by direct hit of a gas-shell; Sergeant Duncan was dead, blown to bits as he ran for shelter; Corporal Haviland’s body lay drilled with machine-gun bullets in the No Man’s Land beyond Arrowhead Copse; seven signallers were dead, five they had watched hobble, one by one, up the sodden path to the dressing-station in Montauban. Now this ultimate horror had screamed down upon them out of the night, tearing the last veils between them and Hell....

They had laboured three hours to cleanse that Hell, laboured calmly and cheerfully among their men, snatching only this brief respite for food and drink. But the Hell they had cleansed from the ground still remained, desperately and damnably clear, in their brains.

For the moment, the reticences of civilized life were in abeyance. Each of these two knew, as he crouched over the bacon-box in the sodden broken chalk-trench, that he was hanging on by the eye-teeth to his last remnant of sanity.

Each still saw the same bestial vision: smashed pit, half-buried gun, slithering soil, mangled men writhing and groaning, mangled men lying deadly still, Charlie Straker’s face white and drawn in the light of the hurricane-lamp—and the Head that watched him, the Head that still grinned under its shrapnel-helmet, the Head which had been Pettigrew....

“That leaves only you and me, P.J.” Sandiland’s fingers plucked at one of the rents in his tunic sleeve. “Only you and me.” His voice quivered up into his head, and he began singing—“You and me together, love; never mind the weather, love.”

“Shut up, you bloody fool”—Peter’s haggard eyes stared across the candle-flame. “Shut up, I tell you. Why the hell don’t you drink that whisky?”

“Sorry, P.J.”—Sandiland crammed the mug against his teeth, sucked down the raw spirit. “By God, that’s good. Pour me out another, there’s a good chap”—he drank again—“I suppose we ought to telephone H.Q.”

“I did that while you were getting them away.”

“Thanks, dear boy. Purves say anything?”

“I spoke to the Colonel”—Peter started to cough—“and he said—damn this cough of mine—he said, ‘should he come up himself?’ I told him the gun would be in action again by midnight, and we could carry on all right if he’d get us another subaltern. He’s sending one up at once”—Peter’s voice too, quivered up into his head. “Poor old Lindsay. Do you remember?”

Once again, sanity trembled in the balance. Their haggard eyes met across the candle-flame; and from behind those eyes naked soul looked at naked soul.

“God”—Sandiland’s voice was low, but tense as a scream—“God, I never knew I was a coward.... I’m not a coward. ... It’s sending the others into it I can’t stick.... I’d go myself.... You know I’d go myself, P.J.... But I can’t stand sending these chaps to their death, day after day, one after the other.... I killed Lindsay.... It wasn’t his turn for F.O.O.... I killed Haviland....” The monologue went on.... “Seven of them—the best signallers a battery ever had—and I detailed them for duty.... One by one I detailed them, didn’t I? ... I chose this battery position, didn’t I?” He began to laugh. “And it’s your turn tomorrow, P.J.... Your turn! ... Bloody funny if I killed our old Adjutant, too.... God, I wish I could go instead of you.... I’ve got to be here, P.J. Do you understand that? ... Here, waiting by these blasted cannons for some poor devil to come crawling back and tell me you’ve been killed....”

But Peter, listening speechless, felt himself the greater coward of the two: for he would have given everything he possessed—everything except that last scrap of gold which is a man’s self-respect—not to go down on the morrow to those trenches whence he had brought back Lindsay’s body.

There came the scrabble of feet above their heads; some one called down out of the darkness:

“Say, is this Beer Battery, Fourth Southdown Brigade? Is this Captain Sandiland’s battery?”

“It is,”—Sandiland’s voice had lost all trace of hysteria. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Henry. Colonel Revelsworth told me to report to you for duty.”

“Stout fellow. Come down if you can find your way. Have you got a torch?”

“Yes. Is it safe to use it?”

“Quite. Mind the wire.”

Followed the sound of falling earth, and a huge man, long gloves and revolver at belt, long torch in brown hand. The newcomer flicked out his torch; saluted with a curious courteous bend of his head; stood blinking at the light of the candle. He was well over six-foot, blue-eyed and broad-shouldered, firm of chin and clean-shaven. He wore the usual cap, collar, belt and tunic of a British second lieutenant; but his breeches bagged curiously at the knee, had the appearance of being tucked loosely into his soft field-boots, at heels of which showed a pair of swan-neck spurs, loosely strapped and formidable of rowel. Boots and spurs were both caked with white chalk. He carried no cane.

“Sit down, won’t you?” said Sandiland. “There’s a box kicking about somewhere. This is Jameson.”

“Glad to know you.” Henry made a movement as if to shake hands; thought better of it; found the box Sandiland indicated; and sat down with that peculiar straddle which denotes a horseman the world over.

There was the usual awkward Anglo-Saxon silence during which men try to sum up fresh acquaintances. To the newcomer, his two hosts seemed two very ordinary British officers; they looked terribly tired, he thought, but their controlled features gave no hint of any other emotion. (For it is only to tried friends that men in battle voice the secret fears of true courage.)

“Have a drink?” asked Sandiland.

“Thanks, no.” The man extracted a small looped bag from one pocket, a packet of cigarette papers from the other; flicked off a thin leaf of paper, moistened it at his lips. Then, holding the paper between fingers and thumb of his right hand, he opened the bag with his left; poured a little heap of tobacco onto the paper, began to roll a cigarette.

“You’re a Canadian, aren’t you?” asked the battery-commander.

“Yes, sir. I’m a Canadian.”

“Been out long?”

“No, sir. About three months. I’ve been with the Ammunition Column most of that time.”

The newcomer spoke slowly, not nasally but with a curious deliberate drawl—a drawl somehow reminiscent to Peter Jameson of five men sitting round a poker-table under the awning of a zinc-decked ship in the Caribbean. One of those five men had drawled his words with just that identical deliberation—and would have been very insulted if he had been referred to as a “Canadian.”

“How did you manage to get here so quickly?” asked Sandiland.

“Well, sir, I happened to be reporting for duty at Headquarters just when your ’phone message got through. The Colonel told me to send my horses back, and come right along with the guide. He said you’d fix me somehow till my blankets arrived.”

Now a Canadian does not talk about his “blankets,” he uses the English word “kit.” Nor does he—as a general rule—smoke granulated tobacco from those looped bags which are referred to as “sacks” in the display-ads of the various firms whose communal address is 111 Fifth Avenue, New York. Also, he strongly objects to walking half-a-mile of sodden ground, trenched and littered with remnants of barbed wire, in his spurs.

These details flashed subconsciously through the mind of Peter Jameson, as the three of them sat together in the crumbling trench: but he was very tired, his cough troubled him—and anyway it was none of his business. There were, he knew from experience, many such “Canadians” among the men who originally joined Kitchener’s Army.

“But how in the devil,” thought Peter, “did he manage to get a commission?” ...

“Number two gun ready for action, sorr,” called Sergeant Abernethy’s voice from above them.

Sandiland called back: “Splendid, Sergeant. We’ll come and have a look at it.”

The three officers scrambled up out of the trench into the noise of the night; picked their way across to the battery. It was pitch-dark with a drizzle of rain; so that the newcomer could see nothing except the occasional crimson of gun-flashes, and the circle of Sandiland’s torch as it danced over yellow pock-marked ground. They jumped a deep crumbling trench; skirted the lip of a huge shell-crater; came suddenly upon the resurrected gun.

By the vague glimmer of a hurricane lamp, men were still at work, disinterring the buried ammunition, wiping the brass cases, stacking them beside the gun-wheels. An improvised tent of tarpaulin, slung between four posts, provided the only overhead cover; a few sandbags had been piled in front of the shield.

Sergeant-Major Cresswell, a stout melancholy man with watery brown eyes and a waxed moustache, whom the death of Lindsay had summoned from the waggon-lines, saluted Sandiland, and said:

“I’m afraid that’s the best we can do for tonight, sir.”

“Very well, Sergeant Major. Have the men had their rum ration?”

“Yes, sir.” He added sotto voce, “They needed it, sir.”

“Right. You’d better let ’em turn in then.”

Number four gun spat its tongue of crimson flame, subsided into silence for another five minutes. “You chaps can knock off now,” called Cresswell’s voice.

Except for the two signallers in the telephone pit and Sergeant Duncan with his two “numbers” at the duty-gun, the whole battery-personnel—officers’ servants included—had been toiling with pick and shovel and dragropes since half-past eight. Now they disappeared into the darkness. Sergeant Abernethy and his six men—two of his own sub-section, the remainder told off from the other detachments—lay down to sleep under their piece.

A figure approached Peter, said, “Should I light the candles in your dug-out, sir?”

“You’d better turn in, I think, P.J.” interrupted Sandiland; “or you won’t get any sleep at all.”

“What about telephoning H.Q., and checking the night-lines of that cannon?”

“Never you mind about H.Q., or the cannon. Just do as you’re told and turn in, there’s a good chap.”

“Very well, sir”—chaffed Peter; and stumbled off, Garton leading, to his dug-out....

Sandiland and Henry made their way towards the telephone-pit. “He’s an obstinate cove, is P.J.,” confided the battery-commander.

“He looks a mighty sick one,” replied the “Canadian.”