Bernadot, the cook, has carved himself one which is quite a masterpiece: stem straight and drawing well, bowl smooth and deep. He has even gone so far as to carve a comrade's face out of the wood: enormous eyes in a small head, grimacing mouth, and aggressive beard, thrust well forward like the prow of a ship. Porchon, by sheer force of will (he is scarlet, and the veins on his forehead stand prominently forth!) has so far obtained rather indecisive, but nevertheless encouraging, results. His piece of wood is slowly shaping and deepening, and unmistakably assuming something of the appearance of a pipe. As for me, I have already been compelled to excuse three spoilt attempts by pointing out that cherry wood is hard, my knife blunt, and my fingers sore. Undeterred by these failures, however, I am starting once more, when, without the slightest warning, three high explosives burst simultaneously close to us, but rather too short. Others follow immediately, flying high, and three plumes of black smoke rise from the shattered earth a hundred yards behind us beyond the wood; range too long! Yet again come a third batch, but this time they drop far from us, exploding away to the right, uprooting a few small pines and throwing them into the air together with tremendous lumps of earth. Before us; behind us; to the right of us! It seems almost prophetic. We rise and pass through the undergrowth without haste, away to the left. We are now out of all danger and can even afford to enjoy ourselves. One would say that the Boche artillerymen are trying to make their last shells fall in the holes dug by the first; they must be firing without any other object than to consume the regulation amount of ammunition. All that remains for us to do is to lie low until they have finished. There is the noise of branches being thrust violently aside, of someone running over the fallen leaves, followed by a long-drawn call which resounds through the wood: "Hullo!..." Someone in our ranks cries: "Here!" The steps approach, and very shortly the face of a man emerges from the cover. He is breathless and greatly upset. "A doctor," he says. "Where can I find a doctor? One is wanted instantly...." "What has happened?" The man replies hurriedly, almost incoherently: "It is Favreau ... cyclist of the 8th ... a leg almost shot away about a minute since ... the first three shells which fell behind the road ... he is bleeding to death ... his leg must be tied up ... he is going out, he is certainly going out...." The doctor whose services the man has impressed, tells us when he returns that he found the wounded man in a dying condition: "The femoral severed, the leg almost torn away. I made a ligature and got him away on an ambulance; but he will never arrive alive at Mouilly." It is five o'clock in the evening. We are on the way to the advance posts.