I crossed the river and followed the line of the entrenchments. The men were resting in the evening before their earth-burrows. I passed along to the corner of our positions; in the half-light one could stand on the earthworks and see without being shot at. The enemy, who were Hungarians, were only six hundred yards off. Between the two lines ran a broad causeway built in time of peace, part of a great dam of which sections are occupied by us and other sections by the enemy. Here, where for a short distance it becomes neutral, all sorts of queer things are possible. Our scouts can pass under partial cover along either side of it, and constantly do so. The enemy makes no counter-moves; his advance sentries stand only just outside his wire entanglements, and creep in and report the moment they see any movement outside; he does not even open fire. The Russian soldier, who here, as elsewhere, has a complete moral and physical superiority, goes out on little night raids, sometimes in small companies, sometimes alone, to hear the conversation of the enemy, which if Slavonic can be readily understood by him, or, still better, to catch a "tongue," that is, to bring home a captive sentinel for information. This is why the enemy's sentries retreat. If fire were opened, it would only tell the Russians just what they want to know, namely, in what strength the positions are occupied. I should like to have stayed here, but there were other things to see; so, with a soldier guide, I passed over some flat, marshy ground to a forward angle of our lines. We found our way by passing the field telephone through our hands, which is also a good means of seeing that it is in order. In the dusk, with the sense of danger and mystery around us and stray bullets sometimes coming from the enemy, my companion spoke in short and simple sentences, of which one would like to have preserved every word. "He" (the German) must be having a bad time; why doesn't he see it? We are drawing in on him from all sides; the Austrians will be no use to him; they are nervous and fire at everything, and seldom hit anything; our people only fire to hit. In a stone cellar with nothing above it, for the whole village was destroyed soon after it was taken, there are gathered the officers of the battalion. The commander, Lukich, is a genial, communicative man who has knit them all together into a little family; indeed, two of the captains are cousins, and the commander has living with him in his mud hut his nephew, a boy of fifteen, who has been allowed to spend his holidays at the war. Not many of those who set out for the war are left now, and that alone makes a closer brotherhood among the rest. They all smile at Lukich's inventiveness and resource, and are all very fond of him.