serious matter, for it meant cutting off our supply of air as well as our chance for escape--it would be bad enough to be killed in a fair fight, but we didn't relish being buried alive; however, we would not give up without a struggle, and we began searching the nearby tunnels for a shovel. In the darkness I heard some one moving, and I said, "Who's there?" A familiar voice said, "Who in hell do you think it is?" I said, "Nobby! is that you? What the mischief are you doing?" He said, "I'm looking for what you never can find when you need it, a d---- shovel." The lad was one of our tunnellers, and we were glad to have his company and also his help in the "digging-out" process. Not finding a shovel, we commenced work with our hands--after we had been working for half an hour Nobby grabbed me and whispered, "Do you see those lights?"--I turned around, and there, about fifty yards away and coming towards us, were about a dozen lights. We talked it over with the Corporal and decided they must be Germans who had broken through the tunnel, so the Corporal said, "One of you boys stay here and dig; and the other two will go back and stop them," but we made him stay, and Nobby and I went to meet the Boches. There was a branch tunnel about thirty yards away, and we hoped to waylay them there; we were armed with revolvers and their lights made them good targets. We reached the branch tunnel just before they did, and we had a lively little scrap with the first two--the others put out their lights when they heard the pistol shots--anyway, they were several yards back and they were in no hurry to get into the fun. We lay there and waited for them, and after things had been quiet for a few minutes they lit their lights and came on--fortunately the tunnel was only wide enough for one man, but all the same we were looking for a lively time--they were ten yards away when there came an awful explosion; a shell had burst directly over their heads. All I remember was a blinding cloud of dust and a gust of wind as our tunnel was blown in, and once more I was buried. We scrambled out and turned to look for our foes, but they had received the full force of the blow and were safely buried; so we thanked our lucky stars and went back to our digging. When we reached our Corporal, we found that he had already dug his way out into the shaft. We crawled out, and looking up we discovered three more boys at the top of the shaft--these belonged to the machine gun crew who had taken up their position there, but a heavy shell had demolished their gun and buried the men--they were just digging themselves out when we appeared, and we gave them quite a surprise. One of them said when he saw us, "Well, where the devil did you come from?" I suppose he thought that because we came from below we must have some connection with his Satanic Majesty. Well, we climbed up to where the boys were and gave them a hand at the digging; finally we made a hole large