A fleeting glimpse of the Major's horse pawing the air with its forelegs, a scattering of a hundred and fifty men before me, and I had passed them all and was galloping up the steep slope of the hill. When at last the Captain came up with me, I was standing at the top of the Mont Noir, wiping Benedictine from my breeches and puttees. I made an attempt at jocularity. "I shall have to speak to Parkes about this engine," I said. "The controls don't work properly, and she accelerates much too quickly." But the Captain saw the ruin of the liqueur bottle lying by the roadside, and was not in the mood for amusement. So we rode in silence down the hill, while the flames of Ypres gleamed and flickered in the distance. Of a sudden, however, the Captain burst into a roar of laughter. "It was worth it," he panted as he rolled in his saddle, "to see the poor blighters scatter. Lord! but it was lovely to hear that Major curse." X THE LIAR For an hour and a half we had been crumped and whizz-banged and trench-mortared as never before, but it was not until the shelling slackened that one could really see the damage done. The sudden explosions of whizz-bangs, the increasing whine and fearful bursts of crumps, and, worst of all, the black trench-mortar bombs that came hurtling and twisting down from the skies, kept the nerves at a pitch which allowed of no clear vision of the smashed trench and the wounded men. However, as the intervals between the explosions grew longer and longer the men gradually pulled themselves together and began to look round. The havoc was appalling. Where the telephone dug-out had been was now a huge hole--a mortar bomb had landed there, and had blown the telephone orderly almost on to the German wire, fifty yards away; great gaps, on which the German machine guns played at intervals, were made all along our parapet; the casualties were being sorted out as well as possible--the dead to be carried into an old support trench, and there to await burial, the wounded to be hurried down to the overcrowded dressing station as quickly as the bearers could get the stretchers away; the unhurt--scarcely half the company--were, for the most part, still gazing up into the sky in the expectation of that twisting, all too familiar, black bomb that has such a terrific devastating power. Gradually quiet came again, and the men set about their interrupted business--their sleep to be snatched, their work to be finished before the long night with its monotonous watching and digging began. With the Sergeant-major I went down the trench to discuss repairs, for much must be done as soon as night fell. Then, leaving him to make out a complete list of the casualties, I returned to my dug-out to share the rations of rum with Bennett, the only subaltern who remained in the company. "Where's the rum?" I asked. "Being shelled makes one thirsty."