To be out of the piercing cold wind in the shelter of walls of earth was an immediate relief. Overhead shone the beautiful ironic stars. A field gun behind them started to crash out shells. Winterbourne listened to the long-drawn wail as they sped away and finally crashed faintly in the distance. He followed the man ahead of him blindly. Word kept coming down: “Hole here, look out.” “Wire overhead.” “Mind your head—bridge.” He passed the messages on, after tripping in the holes, catching his bayonet in the field telephone wires, and knocking his helmet on the low bridge. They passed the Reserve line, then the Support, with the motionless sentries on the fire-step, and the peculiar smell of burnt wood and foul air coming from the dug-outs. A minute later came the sharp message: “Stop talking—don’t clink your shovels.” They were now only a few hundred yards from the German Front line. A few guns were firing in a desultory way. A shell crashed outside the parapet about five yards from Winterbourne’s head. It was only a whizz-bang, but to his unpractised ears it sounded like a heavy. The shells came in fours—crump, Crump, _crump_, CRRUMP—the Boche was bracketing. Every minute or so came a sharp “ping”—fixed rifles firing at a latrine or an unprotected piece of trench. The duck-boards were more broken. Winterbourne stumbled over an unexploded shell, then had to clamber over a heap of earth where the side of the trench had been smashed in, a few minutes earlier. The trench made another sharp turn, and he saw the bayonet and helmet of a sentry silhouetted against the sky. They were in the front line. They turned sharp left. To their right were the fire-steps, with a sentry about every fifty yards. In between came traverses and dug-out entrances, with their rolled-up blanket gas-curtains. Winterbourne peered down them—there was a faint glow of light, a distant mutter of talk, and a heavy stench of wood smoke and foul air. The man in front stopped and turned to Winterbourne: “Halt—password to-night’s ‘Lantern.’” Winterbourne halted, and passed the message on. They waited. He was standing almost immediately behind a sentry, and got on the fire-step beside the man to take his first look at No Man’s Land. “’Oo are you?” asked the sentry in low tones. “Pioneers.” “Got a bit o’ candle to give us, chum?” “Awfully, sorry, chum, I haven’t.” “Them muckin R.E.’s gets ’em all.” “I’ve got a packet of chocolate, if you’d like it.” “Ah. Thanks, chum.” The sentry broke a bit of chocolate and began to munch. “Muckin cold up here, it is. Me feet’s fair froze. Muckin dreary, too. I can ’ear ole Fritz coughin’ over there in ’is listenin’ post—don’t ’arf sound ’ollow. Listen.” Winterbourne listened, and heard a dull hollow sound of coughing. “Fritz’s sentry,” whispered the men. “Pore ole bugger—needs some liquorice.” “Move on,” came the word from the man in front. Winterbourne jumped down from the fire-step and passed on the word.