We crept slowly forward till we came up with the second of the two advanced sentries, a young man crouched on his knee with rifle loaded and ready. Here we stayed a little time, with now and then the lowest whisper, and in front of us the rushing river, beyond which were the sentries of the enemy; sky and air were clear. We crept on to the forward sentry on the bank, and were crouching beside him when a rocket went up in front of us beyond the river followed by a blaze of light and then a second and a third. "Lie down, your nobility," whispered my companion, and we lay as still as we could together while four rifle shots cracked at us. We could hear each other's breathing in the few seconds while the blaze hung above us. We had all crawled back to the second sentry when the rocket went up again followed by more shots, but this time we had some little shelter. We returned and bade "Good-night" to the Watch and lay for a while in a shelter close by, with a whispered talk of our joint task. On the way up the hill there were more rockets and more shots at us, but we were soon back at the earth hut with its welcome shelter and its friendly host, and the straw screen that served as a door shut on a good night and a sound sleep. _February 23._ All day long we sat in our earth hut or passed crouching along the trenches visiting the different points of observation. What a difference a few inches make! At each more exposed point no care seemed enough. The whole day bullets passed above us, sometimes singing--or as George said "wailing"--about fifteen yards off, but most of them embedded themselves in our hill, sometimes kicking away with a ricochet or exploding. Often there were sharp salvos from several rifles at once aimed mostly at the loopholes where our sharpshooters lay ready; men were shot through the forehead in this way. In the afternoon I saw a fire light up in some German trenches by the river, and it quickly spread along their lines. A figure like an insect stood out shovelling at the flames and some of our men shot at it; the German passed down the slope but came again, this time going back at a run. The flames spread further until they were at last extinguished from below. We ourselves got nothing except bullets, and none of our men were wounded. There was no excitement and practically no reply. It was considered that the enemy was wasting his powder, in a nervous fear of attack. But all the day we saw, from our vantage-point, shell after shell raining on neighbouring positions. At one time attention was given to the high ground behind us, and a large hut in which I had halted the night before went up in flames, and in a few minutes seemed to have disappeared altogether. However, only a cow was killed, and except for two huts I found the position unchanged when I passed back here in the evening. No wonder that our own artillery did not deign to reply till the evening, when it lighted up a big flame in a small town beyond the river.