Anxiously we glanced from this view to our watches while the hands crept slowly around to the appointed moment. In the distance there suddenly appeared faint lines of whitish smoke among the trees; and we lit our smoke bombs and hurled them over the parapet. There was a moment's pause, and then they burst into clouds of yellow smoke, hiding the German trench from view. [Illustration: THE START OF THE SMOKE CLOUDS. The Little Demonstration, October 13th, 1915.] The tone of their bombardment changed immediately, and crashing salvoes of high explosive fell around us. Our guns paused for a moment, and the crisp rattle of musketry, the droning of myriads of bees, and the bursts of machine-gun fire were heard alone as they ran through whole belts of cartridges; then all minor sounds were again drowned out by the clashes of our shells as they burst all along the German front line. Gradually the smoke cleared away as the bombs burnt themselves out and showed that no attack was being attempted. The bombardment slackened, though the Germans continued to shell us heavily till almost dusk, but with little further effect except that they rendered the evacuation of our wounded more dangerous. Our casualties had, however, been slight, but it was simply marvellous luck, for our parapets were ruined heaps and the trenches filled with _debris_. We gazed sadly around, knowing it meant many nights of hard work to restore these, and mentally decided to join the artillery in the next war, as they alone had enjoyed the afternoon's work. The German guns had certainly been kept busy, and it was some consolation to read in their report of the affair that "an attack using gas on a thirty-mile front had been repulsed with heavy losses to the enemy." We had produced the desired effect. Below La Bassee the 46th Division had been equally successful and gained the Hohenzollern Redoubt, while on their right in the vicinity of Loos the 4th Corps were holding nearly twelve hundred yards of German front-line trench. It had been a good day's work, but summer was now over and good weather could not be depended on, so no further offensive was made, though fighting of the most stubborn and desperate sort took place around the newly-gained ground, which was, however, successfully consolidated. During the remainder of the month, except for the exploding of a mine and aerial activity, there was little that occurred on the Canadian front. CHAPTER XX MINE WARFARE Among the other things we took over from the outgoing battalion when we first moved into this position was the care and continuance of a mine, and this mine was to form our chief worry as long as we held that line.