“You chaps got your rations?”

“Yes, sir.”

Peter looked at his three men: Bombardier Finlayson, tall, tight-lipped, clean-shaven, shrapnel-helmet atilt on the back of his head; Blenkinsop, a dark, keen little Northumbrian; and Mucksweat, huge, hairy, more like a bear than a man, who had volunteered for “runner.”

“Then we’d better be off.”

Dawn was not yet day as the four crossed the track in front of the guns; tramped away towards the wood. They walked slowly, eyes on the black telephone-wire. “Seems O. K., so far,” said Peter, “better test her though.” The Bombardier unslung his telephone-case, inserted pin in the wire, tapped, was answered.

Now the wire rose from ground to poles; spanned a road yellow with mud; disappeared breast-high among tree-trunks. They pashed across; tested again; passed in among the trees; began fighting their way through the undergrowth along the lip of a zig-zag and water-logged trench.

“Lucky we didn’t run her down there, sir,” grinned the Bombardier.

“Damned lucky.” Already Peter felt dog-weary. Twice he stumbled, and Mucksweat helped him to his feet. Then fatigue reacted; the poison of over-strain distilled its poison of over-energy. The apprehension of overnight disappeared. ...

They worked their way through the wood to the hillside. In front, the world seemed asleep. From behind, came the occasional thud of a gun. A ’plane droned over, high in air. Below them, lay the Bois de TrÔnes, still black in the half-light: all along the fringe of it, they could see waiting infantry. The wire dipped into a dry trench; they followed it down-hill.

They emerged from the trench—and the wire ended abruptly. “Call up the battery,” ordered Peter.... “Battery on, sir.” ... He took the instrument: “Is Captain Sandiland there? ... Hello—That you, Sandiland. ... We’re at the edge of TrÔnes Wood.... All O. K. up to here.... What’s that? ... No good trying to run her any further.... Quite.... I’ll leave Finlayson here.... You’d better send him up a linesman.... What’s that? ... Oh, yes, I’m quite all right. Cheerio.”

“Hadn’t you better leave Blenkinsop, sir,” suggested the Bombardier. “Why?” asked Peter. Finlayson’s lips tightened. “Blenkinsop’s a very good operator, sir.”

“I know that as well as you do, Bombardier. What are you driving at?”

“Well, sir, as N.C.O. of the party....”

“Sportsman!” thought Peter; and reversed an order for the first time. They left Blenkinsop at the instrument; made their way, three helmeted figures, across a road dark with slime and rotted leaves, past the waiting infantry into TrÔnes Wood. The wood still stank of putrefying flesh. Barbed wire looped the trailing undergrowth. Here a shell-axed tree leaned drunkenly against its bullet-pocked neighbour. There, fresh-turned earth betrayed the scavenging pick. Beyond the tree-trunks, day glimmered. Above, black branches trellised gray sky. A ditch full of water led through this place of death.

Ahead of them, something whistled into the undergrowth. They dropped into the ditch; waded along, single file, calf-deep in liquid mud; ducked under a fallen log; waded on again. Another shell whistled into the undergrowth above them. “Whizz-bang,” said Peter laconically.

Now, they were under open sky; making their way along a battered trench towards the support-lines. In front of them and behind them, hidden by humped earth from the enemy, toiled little parties of infantry: bomb-carriers, water-carriers, men with loaded rifles and men with empty stretchers.

The liquid mud deepened to quagmire.

Peter, fighting his way forward, felt the false energy of over-fatigue ebbing from his veins. With every painful pace, his feet rooted themselves deeper. Sodden leather wrenched at his ankles. Heavy water bottle, heavier revolver-holster, dragged at hip and shoulder. Each gasped breath seemed to tear at his heart. His helmet was a shifting torment. Bitter sweat blinded his eyes; dripped from chin to tie. Time and again, only the long iron-shod stick saved him from collapse....

Gradually they neared destination; edged way past crouching men, past the gap where Lindsay had died, to a little eminence above plain-level. Here three mud-lanes met in heaped breastworks. Listless stretcher-bearers and a bundle of S.O.S. rockets marked Battalion-Headquarters—a German dug-out, thirty feet below ground-level, reached by a deep chute of greasy slime.

Peter sank down on one of the bomb boxes which littered the ground; leaned gasping on his stick.

“Feeling tired, sir?” asked Finlayson; and getting no answer, unslung his water-bottle, drew out the cork. “Try a drop of this, sir. It’s cold tea.”

“Thanks, Bombardier—but you’d better keep it for yourself—I’ll be all right in a minute.”

A little strength came back to him; he slipped off his helmet; loosed belt at waist. A dozen times during the half mile from TrÔnes Wood, Peter had wanted to give in; the last three hundred yards had been just a blurr of continuous effort. “Like rowing,” he thought, “got to put your last ounce into it”; and like a rowed-out oarsman he rested for a little—knowing only blessed relief.

“Where’s Mucksweat?” he asked at last.

“You told him to stop about 20 yards back, sir. Just round the corner.”

“Quite right. So I did. You’d better go and join him. I’ll observe from there. This place is rather dangerous.” He staggered to his feet; made for the entrance to Headquarters. Finlayson watched him disappear down the greasy mud-chute; shrugged shoulders; rejoined his companions.

“I dunno what you think about it, Muckie,” said Bombardier Finlayson; “but it seems to me we’re in for a hell of a day.”

Answered Mucksweat the ex-coalminer, crouching bear-like in yellow slime, “He shouldn’t have come. That’s what I say.”