The fort was built of immense blocks of stone, and, as far as one could tell, great quantities of steel, so that its strength must have been enormous. It was a romantic sort of business to get into the fort, because, first of all, we had to pass the sentries, then some huge stone sliding doors were opened, by a lever, I suppose, in the same way as the midway doors of a District Railway carriage open and shut. They were very big and heavy doors, yet they opened and shut quite easily, and when they were closed you could hardly see a crack between them. Past this gloomy entrance was a narrow walled slope which led into darkness. We went down the slope into what looked like an archway and then we got into proper blackness. It was some time before you could get used to such darkness, but at last I saw that we had reached a large vault; but I can’t pretend to give details, because I never had a chance of properly making them out, and we were more concerned about the Germans than we were about the fort. Of course it can be easily understood that owing to the presence of great quantities of ammunition and inflammable stores, only the dimmest lighting was possible--in fact, there was practically no lighting at all except by little portable electric lamps, and as for smoking, that was absolutely off. The instant we reached the fort we were told that smoking was most strictly forbidden, and that disobedience was punishable by death. The French soldier is as fond as the British Tommy of his smoke, but it is a remarkable thing that in the darkness of the fort we didn’t feel the want of smoking, which isn’t much of a catch in the pitch darkness. As a matter of fact I had no wish to smoke when we were in the fort, so I was never tempted to run the risk of being shot. Cooking, like smoking, was out of the question, for you can no more smoke with safety in a magazine like that than you can in a coal-mine--a spark is enough to do tremendous mischief, let alone a fire; so our rations had to be brought to us by the Army Service Corps, though they, with their carts, were a long way off. The A.S.C. chaps were splendid all through, and the men in the fighting line owe a lot to them. In this black dungeon, with such cunning Germans about, a sentry’s challenge was a good deal more than a formality; but it nearly became one when the welcome commissariat man arrived. But for his coming we should have had to fall back on our emergency rations. These were good, of their kind, but they can’t compare with the best efforts of the A.S.C.