Halfway back we had passed a Chinese village, shattered by shells, blackened by smoke, its tumbling walls utilized for the trench. Earthen wine pots had been filled with shale and placed on the sandbags to deceive the gunners beyond. Two days before there was rain and in one part the trench was filled with muddy water. We had to pick our way on submerged stones and planks. As I hurried along, looking at my feet, I noticed that the water grew dull red as though the wine pots above had burst. At that moment I stumbled and caught the wall for steadiness. My hand struck something flabby. I drew it back in horror and found sticking to the palm a white piece of flesh dented with convolutions--a bit of human brain. A pace away he lay, his feet toward me. A stray shell had blown him off from brain base to nose bridge. He was still warm and the officer called back shrilly for a soldier to come with pick and shovel. Then we took notice of the shells bursting, some five miles off, some a thousand yards away. This had happened within the hour. As we came closer to the Dragon a stretcher was borne down by two red cross men. A bullet had picked a private through a peephole. Just ahead of us two soldiers were walking, one with his full kit, rifle and shovel on his back, the other bareheaded and barebacked. Both wore on their sleeves the two yellow stripes of the distinguished soldier. The finger of the one who was to go was held by the hand of the one who was to stay. Neither spoke. They walked silently and slowly in the full sunlight. He of the full kit was ordered into the thirty-minute trench to take the place of the one who had passed out on the stretcher. He, too, is almost sure to pass, ere long, the same way. As the two comrades walked toward the place of death I saw how true Dickens is, for it was precisely thus--finger in palm--that he sent Sydney Carton and the seamstress to _la guillotine_ in “The Tale of Two Cities”; the one who was to go clasping the finger of the one who was to stay, the one who was to stay looking with kind, brave strength calmly into the face of the one who was to go. “Ah! Tragique!” cried D’Adda. The officer said we might one at a time go into the front trench. I started. It was a short climb over shale and debris of sundered shells and of a sudden I hobbled into a hollow space, girt with bags and silent, silent as is the place of execution the morning of capital punishment. It was the redoubt, thrust into the air like the maw of a dragon. The sun beat in beautiful and sure. The rocks, with deadly glare, spat up their challenge. An occasional bullet sang as a ripsaw tears through a pine knot. Then a machine gun rattled and the shale beyond pattered. I was carried back to a boiler factory and an automatic riveter. Of all war sounds that of the machine gun is least poetic, is the most deadly; it has the ring of business.