"Y' seem tae hae th' heng o' thees," said Lawson, as he stumbled and crawled behind me. "Ah'll dae ma' best tae follow your lead. It's a braw new beesness tae me." [He was referring to my method of keeping to natural cover.] "I've been trained in scouting," I replied. "Just do as I do, and with anything like luck we'll come out all whole." Memory took me back to the days I had spent in scouting practice in India, under Major Bruce, the famous scoutmaster of the 2nd Battalion, Fifth Gurkhas--forty days, once, from Dunga-Gully up to the borders of Cashmere and back. Little did I think, in those days, that I'd ever find myself sneaking my way through the flats of Flanders, hiding from enemies in the air as well as on the earth. Now and again we heard a rifle shot--at times quite a distance away; then again, quite close. Often we'd hear the "swish" until at last, the bullet found its mark, with a "click." We must have been out for over two hours, before we neared the German position. At last we could hear an occasional mumbling of hushed voices, and make out the dim outline of wire entanglements. The German position seemed to be on a little plateau. While we were lying on our bellies, my partner could turn his face and look at me, but neither of us dared utter a word. Fifteen minutes seemed like a century. I was more used to it than my partner, but even at that I must admit that I was as nervous as a man that is about to have a death sentence pronounced on him. It is the feeling that possesses every man that patrols "No Man's Land." I motioned to Lawson, and we crawled away like worms that had been overlooked by a hungry crow. We reached our trenches quickly after getting into the broken ground; it was not until we had actually entered them that he opened his mouth. Then, approaching his friend, Donald, he demanded his fags. In a whisper, he triumphantly announced that we had been near enough to hear the Germans talking in their trenches. I went to our officer and reported. It was in the morning after "stand down," when our rum issue had been passed, that we learned what the racket had been the previous night. The Germans had tried a night attack on the King's Royal Rifles. The morning was cold and misty. It was easy to see that we were about six hundred yards from Fritz's trenches, and that his, like ours, were on slightly higher ground than that which lay between the lines. There was a farm house here and there, behind us. I could see a line of trenches on either flank but the one on the right was most easily perceptible. There was an open space at the end of our battalion line on the right flank, and our left flank was bent back slightly. We also learned that we had moved into this position without the Huns knowing that we were near. I could see the boche balloons some distance behind the enemy lines. CHAPTER TEN