“Here you are, sir,” I heard suddenly at my elbow, and found my mug of tea, two large pieces of bread and butter and cake, presented by Davies on a box-lid salver. “I don’t know if this is enough, sir. Lewis he wanted me to bring along a pot o’ jam, sir. But I said Mr. Adams he won’t have time for all that.” “I should think not. Far too much as it is. Here, put the cake on the fire-step, and take hold of this notebook, will you?” And so, with the mug in one hand, and a piece of bread and butter in the other, Scott found me as he came along at that moment, looking, as he told me afterwards, exactly like the Mad Hatter in _Alice in Wonderland_. “What’s the time?” I enquired, munching hard. “I make it two minutes to six,” said Scott. “Go up a shixo’-clock,” I said, taking a very big mouthful indeed. “Who put the sugar in this tea?” I asked Davies a minute later. “I did,” said Davies. “Far too much. I shall never get you fellows to understand ...” But the sentence was not finished. There was a faint “Bomp” from goodness knows where, and a horrid shudder. The earth shook and staggered, and I set my legs apart to keep my balance. It felt as if the whole ground were going to be tilted up. The tea splashed all over the fire-step as I hastily put it down. Then I looked up. There was nothing. What had happened? Was it a camouflet after all? Then, over the sandbags appeared a great green meadow, slowly, taking its time, not hurrying, a smooth curved dome of grass, heaving up, up, up, like a rising cake; then, like a cake, it cracked; cracked visibly with bursting brown seams; still the dome rose, towering ten, twenty feet up above the surrounding level; and then with a roar the black smoke hurtled into the air, followed by masses of pink flame creaming up into the sky, giving out a bonfire heat and lighting up the twilight with a lurid glare! Then we all ducked to avoid the shower of mud and dirt and chalk that pattered down like hail. “Magnificent,” I said to Scott. “Wonderful,” he answered. “The mud’s all in your tea, sir,” said Davies. “Dr--r-r-r-r-r,” rattled the Lewis guns. The Lewis gunners with me had been amazed rather than thrilled by the awful spectacle, but were now recovered from the shock, and emptying two or three drums into the twilight void. I was peering over into a vast chasm, where two minutes ago had been a smooth meadow full of buttercups and toadstools. Suddenly I found Sergeant Hayman at my elbow. “The trench is all fallen in, sir. You can’t get along at all.” And so the night’s work began.