"I want you to go to the Ridge as quickly as you know how," said the adjutant, fixing his eyes on the runner. "The young German has regained consciousness and he tells us that the enemy are going to blow up three mines under our front to-morrow morning at six. The men must withdraw to the second trench until further orders. I've tried to 'phone up, but can get no answer to my calls. The wire must be broken. Hand the message over to Captain Thorley or any other officer whom you may encounter. You do the same, Flanagan, and both report back here when you've done this...." He handed a sealed envelope to Fitzgerald and the runner went out into the night, the final words of the adjutant ringing in his ears. "Very important, remember; very important." Fitzgerald clambered up the side of the pit with difficulty, the chalk was frittering away and the man had very insecure purchase of his feet. Flanagan followed keeping a hundred yards to rear. At headquarters another runner was receiving a similar message. One would certainly deliver it safely. When Fitzgerald crossed the rim of the chalk pit he could see the line of battle, the starshells flaring in the heavens and the lurid flames of bursting explosives lighting up the darkness. In front a spinney where the trees were riven and shattered took on strange shapes, the lifeless ruined branches stretched outwards, as it were, in reproach and despair; the fallen trees lay on the ground like rotting corpses. War's earthquake had rent the whole country. Dark, sepulchral chasms yawned in the ground and the whole earth seemed to have been gutted to its core. A little red-brick cottage was smashed to smithereens; the machinery of a mill stood suspended over nothing, and shapeless walls, jagged and lacerated, quivered in air, ready to fall at the first gust of wind. Where the pits were dug in the earth, shapeless heaps of white chalk were flung up, and beside one of these heaps lay a battery of field guns jumbled in inextricable confusion. The rusty steel muzzles of the guns looked grotesque and distorted; the ruined dug-out in which the gunners once lived, breathed tragedy from every broken beam and torn sandbag. Dead men lay all over the place, shamelessly exposed in the most unlikely situations. On the field of war Death is denied its privileged privacy. Fitzgerald entered the communication trench and hurried along, panting as he ran. Two shells swooped over his head, bursting with a vicious clatter on the field behind him. Others followed, pounding at the parapet like drunken gods. He could hear the splinters hitting the parados with a dull thud to the accompaniment of a thousand rifle bullets which tore at the suffering sandbags. Fitzgerald passed through one trench crossing, then another. "I'll do it in five minutes now," he said, changing his rifle from one shoulder to the other. "I hope the mine doesn't go up before I get there. Five minutes," he muttered, "I'll be there in five minutes."