But Fitzgerald miscalculated. At the end of five minutes he found himself in a deserted trench, all alone, and then decided that it was time to turn back. Probably he had taken the wrong trench at the last crossing. He went back for a short distance and came to a junction. Several trenches crossed at this point, but the locality seemed new to him. He had not been there before. "Well, I'm damned," he said, and then added, "I'm lost as well." He realised the danger of his plight and felt uncomfortable. Stories were often told over braziers in the dim trench traverse, and many of these stories spoke of men who went astray in the trenches and never returned. Sometimes the lost soldiers found themselves in the enemy's lines, and on other occasions they wandered up to their home parapets to fall a victim to the rifle of a nervous sentry. Fitzgerald had heard many of these stories and he recollected them now. Much fighting had recently taken place on Vimy Ridge and the English and German trenches criss-crossed in several localities; in some places both parties occupied the same trenches. Fitzgerald, alone and astray, had no definite idea of his position; he only knew that he was lost at the cross-trenches and did not know which trench led to safety. Perhaps he had passed beyond the British front. He peered over the top. The night was quiet, scarcely a rifle spoke, though many star shells were ablaze in the heavens and dropping petals of flame to the dark earth.... Right in front of Fitzgerald was a ghastly heap, jumbled and confused, a heap of dead men. And round this heap lay other dead things, rejected from the more composite and bulky distortion of war. The solitary figures lay--some face downwards, arms spread out, others curled up like sleeping dogs. "Well, where am I?" asked Fitzgerald. "Whose starshell is that, ours or theirs?... Where's our line?" He looked at a dead thing near him and shuddered. Then, shouldering his rifle, he made his way up the trench on his right. "This is all right!" he muttered, passing a projecting beam of a fallen dug-out. "I passed this a minute ago ... but not this." He detached himself awkwardly from the heap of limp bodies into which he had fallen and hurriedly retraced his steps to the junction where the dark trenches opened up to unknown mysteries. Fitzgerald leant wearily against the wall and puzzled over many things. "If I go over the top, what happens?" he asked himself. "Run into a German patrol, maybe, or into one of our own covering parties and they'll shoot me on sight. If I go along a trench, I'll probably get into the German lines. That won't do, either. I'm like a rat in a trap.... But I must get out of it. Yes, I must get out of it.... But how?"