They struggled up Southampton Row and skirted M——, which was being shelled heavily and reverberantly. They got into another trench on the fringe of Hill 91. Whizz-bangs kept cracking all round them, in little masses of about a dozen—several batteries firing together. Evans and Winterbourne were leading. Winterbourne paused: “There’s a curious smell about here, Sir” (sniff, sniff) “like pineapple or pear-drops.” Evans sniffed the air. “So there is.” The smell rapidly became stronger after another salvo of whizz-bangs. “By Jove, it’s tear-gas!” said Evans. “Pass the word along to put on gas goggles.” The line halted, while the men fumbled in the darkness for their goggles; and then slowly stumbled on. Winterbourne found he was practically blinded by his goggles in the darkness; they kept going dim with perspiration. He took them off. “We shall be here all night at this rate, Sir. May as well be blinded with tear-gas as goggles. I’ll keep mine off and reconnoitre.” Evans pulled off his goggles, and the two went on ahead, telling the Sergeant to follow straight on until he came up with them. Tears poured from the two men’s eyes as they toiled up the muddy trench. They kept dabbing their eyes with pocket handkerchiefs, like a couple of mutes at their own funerals. Crash, crash-crash, crash, crash-crash-crash-crash, came the whizz-bangs; and the pineapple smell became stronger than ever. “It’ll be a jolly look-out for us,” said Evans, “if they poop over poison-gas too. We shan’t be able to smell it with all this stink of pear-drops. Peuh! It’s like being in a sweet factory.” They laughed. And then dabbed their streaming eyes again. In ten minutes they came up to the largest of the mine craters. The wind was fresh on the hill-crest and there was no gas. Their smarting eyes began to recover. “Here we are,” said Evans, “and there’s the old No Man’s Land, but where in hell our Front line is, I don’t know. You stay here, Winterbourne, and tell Sergeant Perkins to halt until I come back. I’ll go and reconnoitre.” “I’ll go back and fetch them, Sir, and bring them up.” “All right,” and Evans vanished in the darkness. Winterbourne returned to the line of men, dismally groping their way through the gassy trench. They waited for Evans, who led them over the old No Man’s Land to a very deep trench. They turned to the left. Evans whispered to Winterbourne: “There’s nothing here but a net-work of Boche trenches; look how deep they are. I couldn’t see a soul, and there are still Boche trench-notices up. I’m hanged if I know where we are. For all I know we’re in the Boche lines.”