means of duckboards resting on the marshes, and these at times crossed ditches eighteen feet deep. Shell-holes in the front areas were quickly filled with water and converted into ponds of varying depths. As at Ypres, the heavy shells tore great pits in the roads and blocked them. One night a guide was sent to conduct some transport past a newly-made and particularly deep crater. Presently he warned the drivers that the hole was close at hand—and a moment later disappeared. Out of the depths arose an agonized wail. “Stop! for heaven’s sake, stop! I’m down the ⸺ hole myself!” [Illustration: NIEUPORT, SHOWING REMAINS OF PUTNEY AND CROWDER BRIDGES AND RUBBER HOUSE IN THE DISTANCE.] [Illustration: INDIA-RUBBER HOUSE, USED AS BATTALION HEADQUARTERS.] There were no communication trenches to most parts of the line in the left sub-sector, and on dark nights it was easy to lose one’s way. On the night of the 10th-11th of October, Lieut.-Colonel G. E. Hope, M.C., commanding the 8th Lancashire Fusiliers, while visiting his outposts with two officers at a point very near to the enemy line, saw a post ahead and called out: “What post is that?” On this challenge the German flat-topped caps were seen instead of the expected “tin-hats.” The three officers got clear, but, the night being very dark, they stumbled into another enemy post. Bombs were thrown and a machine-gun opened on them, and in the mêlée the three were separated. Hope, who had been leading, was last seen in the midst of the enemy, who were fighting one another in the confusion, and he was never heard of again. His companions got away, one by waiting until there was sufficient light to give him his bearings; the other by the desperate expedient of trusting to the enemy’s knowledge of the British lines and making for a spot where the “minnies” were falling. [Sidenote: _General Solly-Flood arrives_]