He fixed his glasses on the gray wave; saw it recede; saw line after line of tiny black figures, ant-like, swarm out of the ground; vanish into the grayness. “Tell the Colonel. Infantry gone over.” “Aye, aye, sir.” Below, noise lessened. He peered into the smoke-pall. Further it rolled; and further. In it, nothing moved. Out of it, emerged house-tops. And suddenly he saw the black specks again, little bunches of them. Peter studied his map; took out his protractor. “Call up the Colonel. Is that you, sir? Infantry retiring from the direction of City Saint Élie.” “Are you quite certain? We’ve had a rumour that City Saint Élie’s fallen.” “Quite certain, sir. True bearing from here is 100 degrees.” “Thanks. I’ll report to Division.” And that was all our Mr. Jameson saw of the fifty thousand very gallant gentlemen who stormed forward _through our own gas_, dribbling foot-balls, tooting hunting-horns, skirling bag-pipes and blowing mouth-organs—on the morning of September the 25th, nineteen-hundred and fifteen! Gradually, the gun-fire died away; smoke cleared from the plain. Bare and silent, the dun sea stretched to the sky-line. From very far away, came a faint chattering of machine guns. A German balloon rose up; peered at things; went down again. Down the Hulluch road, a toy battery trotted noiselessly. Only the French “heavies” behind the Fosse, still clanged unceasing. But the great slag-cone itself seethed with excited men. Out from their burrows they came; down from their eyries; maps in their hands, telescopes under arm, binoculars dangling from their shoulders. Rumour hundred-wired, ran among them. Loos had fallen,—said rumour—Hulluch was ours, City Saint Élie, Haisnes, Douvrin! “By God, we’ve broken them,” roared a fierce little Major of Garrison Artillery, “by God, we’ve broken them at last!” And he danced up there, on the gritty slag, none heeding. “Look,” shouted the Captain of Sappers, “look! The Cavalry!” And moisture brimmed into his eyes, watching the squadrons wheeling into line on the grass-fields just below. And always, high up, like monkeys among the telephone-posts, the three Frenchmen jabbered to their clanging guns—“_Bon. Bon. Bien tiré. Magnifique. On les a, je vous dis. Oui. Oui. Oui. On les a!_” But Chips Bradley’s grandson, peering out over the empty plain, peering back towards Béthune—waiting, waiting, waiting, for the dust cloud on the road, the dust cloud that never came—thought of the words his Colonel had spoken the night before. And the heart in him was heavy, even in those early hours, with forebodings of disaster! § 4 Light grew and grew. Fitful gleams of sunshine danced across the plain. More cavalry came, squadron after squadron, wheeling into line on the fields just below. But they made no movement forward, those wheeling squadrons. Peter saw them through his glasses—dismounting, loosening girths, fume of their cigarettes blue in the air.