It was best traced by the dead that lay in it, by the litter of steel helmets, rifles, bombs, gas-masks, bayonets, water-bottles, arms and equipment of every kind strewed along it. By now Ratty had lost all sense of direction or location, but Johnny at his elbow was always able to keep him informed. Ratty at first refused to accept his statements, but was convinced against all argument, and it was always clear from the direct and unhesitating fashion in which they were led that those in command knew where they were and where to go. “We should pass three trees along this trench somewhere soon,” Johnny would say, and presently, sure enough, they came to one stump six foot high and two splintered butts just showing above the earth. They reached a wide depression, and Johnny pointed and shouted, “The sunk road,” and looking round, pointed again to some whitish-grey masses broken, overturned, almost buried in the tumbled earth, the remains of concrete machine-gun emplacements which Ratty remembered had been marked somewhere back there on the practice ground by six marked boards. “Six,” shouted Johnny, and grinned triumphantly at the doubter. The last of Ratty’s doubts as to the correctness of battle plans, even of the German lines, vanished when they came to a bare stretch of ground which Johnny reminded him was where they had been warned they would most likely come under enfilading machine-gun fire. They halted on the edge of this patch to get their wind, and watched some stretcher-bearers struggling to cross and a party of men digging furiously to make a line of linked-up shell-holes, while the ground about them jumped and splashed under the hailing of bullets. “Enfiladin’ fire,” said Ratty. “Should think it was too. Why the ’ell don’t they silence the guns doin’ it?” “Supposed to be in a clump o’ wood over there,” said Johnny. “And it ain’t due to be took for an hour yet.”