Ten minutes passed—a quarter of an hour—twenty minutes. He looked at his watch, lit a cigar. Half-an-hour went by. Two hours more to wait! A couple of infantrymen appeared, took station beside him. Round the traverse, he could hear other infantrymen coming up. Damn it, would the time never pass? . . . Very high overhead, five Hun machines planed gleaming across gray sky. . . . He began to be afraid. . . . Fear gripped his stomach. . . . He must look over again, make sure of his way to those white molehills. . . . Twenty past ten—a whole miserable hour and forty-three wretched minutes more. . . . Suddenly, the first enemy shell howled across the sky, burst hollowly at the edge of Trônes Wood. “Dommned if that one didn’t come from behind us,” ejaculated Mucksweat. “Pretty well,” said the Bombardier calmly. “Often got ’em that way in the Salient, didn’t you? . . . Course you did. . . . Well, this is a salient too, see!” “I see,” said the huge hairy man. Even while he spoke, the second shell screamed and lit crashing to the ground behind. Splinters whizzed over them as they crouched to cover. Barrage fire began—a slow barrage, terrifying in its very deliberateness. Scream followed scream down the unchanging sky; crash followed crash—now right of them, now left, now directly behind. Only their own tiny portion of trench, the sodden mud-walls between which they huddled under whirling splinters, seemed immune—burrow of safety in an exploding world. “Christ!” thought Peter, “how long can this go on?” For a second, he knew absolute panic; his legs wanted to run away with him; he couldn’t stick it, couldn’t stick it another minute. Came a pause in the crash of sound. Peter looked at the two infantrymen, crouching white-faced below the parapet; at Finlayson, tight-lipped, apprehensive; at Mucksweat biting his huge moustache. Then, very deliberately, he stood upright; drew field-glasses from case; peered over towards the enemy. One of the infantrymen joined him. “Do you know the ground?” began Peter. . . . The shell gave no warning. He was aware only of a terrific thunder-clap, of a savage boot-hack at ear-drum. . . . Then blackness, blackness through which he struggled for light. . . . In the slime he struggled, fighting a warm dead thing. . . . The thing lifted from him. . . . Light came back. . . . He felt hands gripping him; heard Mucksweat’s voice. Face down in the slime, lay the dead body of the infantryman, helmetless, brains oozing—crimson sweet-breads—from shattered skull. Above the body, bent its living mate—the second infantryman. Suddenly, he turned; snarled over his shoulder: “_You_ killed him, damn you. You! You! You! You bastard.” “Easy on, mate,” cut in the voice of Finlayson, “you’re talking to an officer.”