For myself, so nervous was I that I would have welcomed an attack to end the suspense. However, we were left in peace till daybreak, which came with a drizzling rain. This made conditions in the trench very bad indeed. But all we could do was to sit tight and wait. When it was almost light the bombardment started again. It was one roaring, shrieking blast of destruction. Never can I describe the din, the awful rumble of the heavy-weight champions; the magnified thunderclap of their heavy shrapnel; the moaning of the Black Marias; the hiss and scream of their medium-size shells, and the hated whiz bangs, bursting over every section of the trench. And, remember, not a British gun to reply. Hell's gaping craters were open everywhere; now and again a shriek or an oath told that some lad had been stricken down; our parapets were crumbling like matchwood; but all we could do was to wait. To the sorrow of every one of us, the gallant soul of Bill Skerry took its flight to his Maker about ten o'clock that morning. A small shell ricochetting from a stunted willow tree simply tore him to pieces, along with a little chap named Wellbelove, which was his family name, and a name he most aptly deserved. Bill! one of our best beloved mates. We never had time to bury him, but, thank God, he didn't fall alive into the hands of those human devils. A curious effect of the shell burst was to lengthen out his body. When alive and well he was a man of six feet two, and when we examined him after his death, he easily measured seven feet. The sorrow of his little chum, Fitzpatrick, was overwhelming; nothing could comfort him for days. It was here that I first felt real fear. Terror of course we all have, but that soul-gripping inaction took all manhood away from me as I crouched in the bottom of the trench, trying with might and main to appear unconcerned. I have never experienced quite the same sensation of fear in the front line at any time as I did that night; I felt deadly danger on every hand and my face and head were wet with cold sweat. In curious contrast to my constitutional dread of the danger abounding on every hand was a man who happened to have possessed himself of a fairly dried dugout. With that torrent of shell hurtling everywhere, he calmly read chapter after chapter of a magazine, apparently as deeply interested as if he were sitting in his own room at home. How I envied him his nerves--or, rather, the absolute lack of them. CHAPTER XXI HANGING ON About fifty yards to the rear of us was a huge pile of bricks, fully a hundred yards long by thirty feet high. The ground we were occupying had originally been a brick yard and these bricks had been put out to dry, but the war coming on they had been left and had gradually settled down into a solid mass.