“_Gas-shell, sir. Gas-shell!_” The voice from without wrenched him from unconsciousness. “Right,” he called back. “All right.” Now he was wide awake, bolt upright on his haunches. Automatically he pulled the respirator from under his pillow; took up the tube; adjusted clip to nostrils, mouthpiece to lips. . . . Cough wrenched at his throat. . . . He put the tube down again; sat listening. . . . “False alarm,” he thought. “Thank goodness for that.” . . . Then he heard, close overhead, a low slow whistle, like a sigh through the night. . . . Sighing ceased. . . . Peter jammed the mouthpiece back to his lips, re-adjusted the clip to his nostrils. . . . Another shell sighed over him; he heard the faint plop of its grounding, the vague hiss of its burst. . . . The roof quivered; a handful of soil pattered onto his valise. . . . The candle guttered: went out. . . . Another shell sighed to ground. . . . He knew himself afraid—horribly shamelessly afraid. The clip on his nostrils was torture: the mouthpiece stifled him: blood drummed at his ears: he wanted to cough. . . . But he dared not cough. . . . The night above him was full of sighing poisonous things. . . . God, there must be thousands of them. . . . They were falling all about him: sighing slowly down out of the night: plopping to ground: sighing out their poison. . . . They were looking for him: tap-tap-tapping round the roof of his coffin. . . . They wanted to find the roof of his coffin: to break through it; stifle him as he lay. . . . Courage fought panic—alone in the darkness. “Damn it,” thought Peter, “damn it. They _shan’t_ get my tail down.” And shelling ceased: suddenly, miraculously, the night grew still. Peter loosed the clips from his nostrils, sniffed cautiously. The air was pure—no trace of gas. He let the mouthpiece fall, began to cough, dropped back coughing on his pillow,—and knew neither fear nor courage, but only the blissful unconsciousness of utter exhaustion till he heard Driver Garton’s “Half-past four, sir. Half-past four. Time to get up, sir.” PART TWENTY-FIVE THE LAST OUNCE § 1 The “Canadian”—unused to gun-fire—had not slept. Now, in the first glimmer of dawn, he climbed map-in-hand out of the telephone-pit; began to locate his position. Behind, a mere dip in the ground, lay the valley through which he had walked overnight. Close on his left, bulked low shattered walls which he knew to be Montauban. In front, about five hundred yards from the battery, he could make out a ragged fringe of trees—Bernafay Wood. On his right, flat ground rose slightly to a hump near skyline which must be the Briqueterie. On three sides of him, in the valley behind, among the trees in front, and on the flat ground to his right, occasional guns flashed and smoked among the rising mists.