How thick these woods are! Beneath the giant trees whose lower branches begin to spread at least sixty feet above the earth, the exuberant undergrowth runs riot. It stretches across and over the path in wonderful confusion, branches twining with branches, until they seem designedly to have combined to check our progress. Thick and flexible, we have to thrust them aside with our hands before we can go on; while tenacious offshoots, wrapping themselves about our legs, send us stumbling constantly. To right and left are green depths, as far as the eye can reach. Green, too, is the moss, fresh and velvety in the shadows; tinged with russet and gold where the sun has caught it. Green are the trunks of the age-old trees, with the humid, unhealthy greenness which betokens rot; green the countless leaves, changing and varying with the caprice of the breeze; green, yet gold-flecked, are the leaves already touched by autumn's finger. I raise my head while we march along, seeking the sky's limpid blue for relief; but I can see only a few patches of the heavens, tranquil and serene above the restless quivering of the woods, which lighten the way for us, prisoners of this prodigious multitude of trees, of this unpitying sea of undergrowth. We have almost fallen into the trenches, which open unexpectedly at our feet. The heads of men appear above the soil; then the men hoist themselves out of the deep cutting, with the aid of their rifles, and the relief is effected, very swiftly and without noise, in broad daylight. These trenches are splendid, deeply sunk in the chalk, with low parapets supported by wattles. Above them, a roof of leaves droops almost down to the parapet, leaving only a narrow opening through which we can survey the terrain, without being seen. It is not possible to see far, because the visible field of fire extends only eighteen feet or so beyond our rifles, thirty feet at the most at the widest part. This zone, too, is covered with the stumps of felled trees. Beyond it there are more, as dense as those behind us, and therefore more redoubtable than the Germans they hide. The terrain slopes steeply away from us for a hundred yards or so, then rises again to a summit, which marks the horizon a mile away. The side of this rising is covered with undergrowth and, here and there, high trees. The sinking sun bathes the wood in a crimson light, which ruddies the leaves on the higher branches of the trees. And while the pungent odour of the woods rather oppresses me, my eyes weary not, until the darkness of the night extinguishes the colours, of contemplating the trees, which seem to touch the sky, whose leaves tremble in the failing light and which appear beautiful beyond description on this fading autumnal day. _Sunday, October 4th._ Porchon has reassured himself. While we sit, plunging our pocket-knives in the same tin of beef, he enunciates considerations which have tended to induce this happy frame of mind.