I got out my handkerchief and again employing my wounded mouth to aid my serviceable hand, tied the handkerchief around my arm in the manner of a tourniquet--a performance in which I had expert training and practice--made a final loop, found a knife in my pocket, inserted it into the loop and though my arm throbbed excruciatingly in appeal for gentleness, turned the lever relentlessly until I knew the flow of blood must be greatly checked if not entirely stopped. Now you must not think this took me any great time. I did it shakily but in greatest haste. For common sense gave its warning that the explosion of the bomb in territory near their batteries must soon bring investigators. And what I knew they did to soldiers they caught in their man-traps I knew they would as certainly do to me if I was found--just cold-bloodedly and in Hun fashion slay and mutilate me. I heard the grumblings and sharp mutterings of men coming up from a dug-out. And when I say in Hun fashion I mean something horrible--more horrible than even the world has yet learned. And in that most crucial moment of my life, I leaped out of the trench and in the same instant I saw my savior. I hope it is all right to call a mud-hole a savior. There it was behind a clump of ragged bushes. I like to reflect now that it was one of the shells from our own guns as they sought out this battery of the enemy that had made for me this refuge. I stumbled and plodded for this mud-hole. Most gratefully I sank into it. I threw myself into it fully, a dead weight, that I might sink the deeper into it. I didn’t in the least mind the pain to my wounds that the fall cost me. I then began with all the speed I could muster, slapping the mud all over me as in happier days at the ocean side, I had buried myself in the hot, dry sands. I reveled in this reeking, black muck. And with good reason. As I sank deeper and deeper into it and slapped it over my body, then over my face, when I was submerged in the black, glutinous, offensive pudding so that only my nose stuck out, a nose smeared also to conform to the surface color of the muck-hole--well, then and only then I began to feel that I had a chance for my life. A mud-hole may be an ignoble thing, but God’s blessing on this one. It proved, as I have said, my life-saver. I had hardly thoroughly concealed myself in the black mess when a dozen soldiers came treading the path and the surrounding land--came wearily, some with rifles, some with bombs.