Then he passed, without further thought of Bowdy, to memories which came into his head at random. He thought of his home, away up a little glen in Galway, of the neighbours there, of Doalty Fadhan, the great gambler, who always won when he turned his coat outside in, of Eamon Hudagh, who got drunk at Glenagh Fair and lost his clothes somewhere at night; in the morning he came across the hills in a red flannel petticoat; of Paddy Brogan who cleared out the same fair with a stone in the foot of a woman's stocking. "I wish I was in Glenagh now," Fitzgerald said. "A good turf fire, a bit and a sup and the neighbours coming in for the night's raking." Then all these memories and desires floated together and jumbled themselves up in his head, and he fell asleep. He was awakened by a feeling that everything was not as it should be. For the unusual there was only one place to look, out on his front, and his eyes were already fixed on the grey, formless level which lay between his trench and the enemy's. Nothing changed there, everything just.... Then Fitzgerald saw a huge bulk take shape on his right front, twenty yards from the trench and fifty yards away from the spot where he stood. The bulk rose upright, like a gigantic monster of some pre-Adamite age, paused for a second as if considering something, then it burst in twain, and Fitzgerald flopped down into the mucky trench, half blinded and deafened by the flash and thunder of the exploding mine. The earth had vomited its entrails out, a million rocks rioted through the air and ricochetted off the parapet; the dawn was thick with flying rubbish, the greater part of which seemed to be falling into the trench, dropping with a sickly splosh into the muck. The world was falling down around the ears of the Irishman. "Out and man the mine crater!" The order came along the trench like a half strangled whisper. Fitzgerald rose from the muck and spluttered the message along to the next bay, then gripped his rifle and clambered up and across the parapet. Most of the men were already out and rushing towards the crater of the mine. Fitzgerald had a vivid impression of flying figures in sheepskin coats, of rifles in air, of bursting shells, of men stumbling, falling and rising, of hoarse-voiced oaths and imprecations, of queries and answers. "Not our mine, is it?" "I thought we were too far apart." "Are we to get into the blurry 'ole 'fore the gas clears away?" were a few of the remarks which came to his ears. A corporal halted near him and shouted something about the risk the men were running. "We'll be poisoned by the fumes in the crater," he said. "We're coming across too soon. Far too soon," he muttered; "far too blurry soon!"