The three officers scrambled up out of the trench into the noise of the night; picked their way across to the battery. It was pitch-dark with a drizzle of rain; so that the newcomer could see nothing except the occasional crimson of gun-flashes, and the circle of Sandiland’s torch as it danced over yellow pock-marked ground. They jumped a deep crumbling trench; skirted the lip of a huge shell-crater; came suddenly upon the resurrected gun. By the vague glimmer of a hurricane lamp, men were still at work, disinterring the buried ammunition, wiping the brass cases, stacking them beside the gun-wheels. An improvised tent of tarpaulin, slung between four posts, provided the only overhead cover; a few sandbags had been piled in front of the shield. Sergeant-Major Cresswell, a stout melancholy man with watery brown eyes and a waxed moustache, whom the death of Lindsay had summoned from the waggon-lines, saluted Sandiland, and said: “I’m afraid that’s the best we can do for tonight, sir.” “Very well, Sergeant Major. Have the men had their rum ration?” “Yes, sir.” He added _sotto voce_, “They needed it, sir.” “Right. You’d better let ’em turn in then.” Number four gun spat its tongue of crimson flame, subsided into silence for another five minutes. “You chaps can knock off now,” called Cresswell’s voice. Except for the two signallers in the telephone pit and Sergeant Duncan with his two “numbers” at the duty-gun, the whole battery-personnel—officers’ servants included—had been toiling with pick and shovel and dragropes since half-past eight. Now they disappeared into the darkness. Sergeant Abernethy and his six men—two of his own sub-section, the remainder told off from the other detachments—lay down to sleep under their piece. A figure approached Peter, said, “Should I light the candles in your dug-out, sir?” “You’d better turn in, I think, P.J.” interrupted Sandiland; “or you won’t get any sleep at all.” “What about telephoning H.Q., and checking the night-lines of that cannon?” “Never you mind about H.Q., or the cannon. Just do as you’re told and turn in, there’s a good chap.” “Very well, _sir_”—chaffed Peter; and stumbled off, Garton leading, to his dug-out. . . . Sandiland and Henry made their way towards the telephone-pit. “He’s an obstinate cove, is P.J.,” confided the battery-commander. “He looks a mighty sick one,” replied the “Canadian.” § 3 The “dug-out” towards which Peter and Garton stumbled was a coffin-shaped hole burrowed in the soil, roofed with a piece of corrugated iron and one layer of sandbags. A mackintosh ground-sheet, supported on a wooden beam, prolonged this improvised roof; provided some protection from the rain which drove in at the “door”—a narrow entrance reached by three “steps,” mostly mud. Down these, the pair slithered.