What a sight met my eyes! Row after row of brawny Canadian Highlanders lay raving and gasping with the effects of the horrible gas, and those nearing their end were almost as black as coal. It was too awful--and my nerves went snap! However, a lull came at night, except for the steady fighting on our left, where the Seventh and Eighth were making history, and I managed to get back all right, and repairing trenches was again the order of the moment. A fine, handsome Scotch lad, Jim Muirhead, one of my best chums, was working with me repairing a section of trench. At this place we hadn't any sandbags, but simply had to pile up the loose earth in front of us. Deep down in the ground we had made two sloping holes, propping up the top by odd timbers we found lying about. We did this to save ourselves from a big shell Fritz would occasionally lob over in our immediate vicinity. Now Jim is about six feet high and his hole was a big one, mine a small one. We could hear this shell coming and if we moved quickly, we gained the shelter of our holes before it burst. Once, we heard the faint pop in the distance and then a gradually increasing shriek; it was coming--to my excited fancy--straight for our heads. In my panic to escape the crack of doom I hurled myself into Jim's hole, beating him by about the fiftieth of a second. "Get to hell into your own hole." "Go to the devil." Our colloquy was barely ended when the shell burst, but this time it was too far off to do any damage. I was thoroughly ashamed of my selfishness, which was due to the first instinct of nature, but good old Jim saw nothing in it but a good joke on himself. All night long to left and right the scrap went on, just one steady crackle of rifle and machine gun fire, while from every angle they shelled the Seventh Battalion. Their trenches were simply one huge shamble, but they held. Morning came, and still the bombardment raged. At about three in the afternoon we saw a figure approaching our trenches and by his style we knew it to be our dear old major. On he came in spite of the fire. By this time Fritz was spraying our parapet top with machine guns and we knew he was at last going to try us. Still, on came the old soldier. He was well over sixty, but a hero's heart belonged to him. Orders had come through from headquarters for the Fifth to retire and all the staff at headquarters had been either killed or wounded with the exception of the major and Captain Hillion, our adjutant, a soldier from his feet up. These two decided, after vainly trying the field telephone, to give us our orders by word of mouth and they set out on foot.