No! Our mines must be worked; our boilers must be made; and our munition machinery must be run to its utmost capacity, or we are traitors to those guns and our fighting men; our brothers, our own sons, who are depending upon the might of England for victory and their lives. Throw down your tools, slacken your machinery, and High Wood and Trones Wood will become blacker still with the mutilated bodies of a thousand men. A penny an hour! You, who are being coddled under the protection of these guns, what is your quarrel to this? If those desperate fellows on the other side of the hill were to leave their tasks, they would be called traitors. Yet, when men in England, whom these fighters are dependent upon, and whose work is just as necessary for the success of the war, throw down their tools, they are only called strikers. The crime is the same; the punishment should be the same. CHAPTER X ARRIVAL ON THE SOMME FEEDING THE GUNS. SEPTIMUS D'ARCY ARRIVES. A CURIOUS KIT Late that evening orders came to move into the trenches on the far slope of the Valley of Death. Trenches here, trenches there, trenches everywhere, while we groped around without knowing where the trenches led to, or the position of the German lines. We spent an anxious night, the uncertainty of our position and mystery of those massed guns, thundering their wrath into the darkness of the night, caused a tension which defied any desire to sleep. What was the meaning of it all? What was happening over yonder, where the iron of England's anger was falling, bursting, tearing, killing? What was happening over there? Would we receive a similar reply? The signs were significant: we were at last on the Somme; we were in for it with a vengeance. The next morning broke bright and fair, and found us still awake with eyes peering anxiously through the rising mist. We were evidently not in the front line, but were there on the Somme; and that sea of shell-holes which everywhere surrounded us told its own story of what had been, and what was yet to be. At about 11 o'clock all eyes were turned towards High Wood, on the crest of the hill to the left. A burst of shells from the enemy's guns told that a target had been found. We watched, and presently we could faintly see a column slowly moving along the road through the wood. Three ammunition wagons moved slowly towards our guns. Crash! A 5.9 fell in front of the leading horses; a cloud of dense, black smoke arose and blotted the picture from view. The smoke cleared, and the little column was still moving slowly forward, undisturbed and indifferent. Crash! Crash! Two more shells burst by the side of the second wagon; the smoke cleared; the horses were startled and giving trouble, but once again the defiant little column moved slowly forward, indifferent and undismayed. We continued to watch the plucky little column, now obscured by the black smoke of the bursting shells, then again emerging from the smoke, heedless of danger.