Bowdy felt very weary. His head was spinning and he had great difficulty in standing upright. He had one consolation, however. The sniper was in as bad a state as he was. He looked down with vague eyes at the man and saw that he was recovering from his blow and the fighting devil was still strong within him. Groping his way to his feet, the sniper assumed an attitude of defence. "Come on!" said Bowdy in an energetic tone. "I have no time to waste and I cannot strike ye when ye're sickly like that. Man! Ye should be ashamed of yerself. Fighter indeed!" "English pig-dog" grunted the sniper and sweltering into a tornado of incoherent threats which the Englishman could not understand, he swept Bowdy round in a ring and landed lightning blows several times in quick succession. All the man's enormous vitality seemed to have been rekindled, a million beasts of prey were loose in his body. Benners, struggling fiercely in an endeavour to live through the tempest of his enemy's wrath, groped for a clinch and swept into its embrace. Here he was safe for a moment and hoped that the German would consume his strength. In this anticipated waste of the opponent's strength lay Benners' hope of success. Leaning his chin on the German's shoulder he had a moment to look round. Unreality and ghostliness lay over No Man's Land and an uncanny atmosphere settled on the levels. Away down by Loos a bombardment had commenced and the red flashes of the guns lit up the restless salient. Near at hand could be seen a barbed wire entanglement, probably the enemy's. Benners saw the flashes of the shells and asked himself what the time was. He felt that he had been fighting for hours and it appeared to him that he could never get the business to an end. The sniper seemed stronger than ever now; the man was surging with life and mad with hatred. He was a fiend, incarnate, terrible. Bowdy wondered vaguely as he snuggled his head over the sniper's shoulders if the man was tired, if he felt that the contest had lasted long enough. As in answer to the unspoken thought, the German ducked and caught his man by the ankles and tried to raise him to his shoulders. Vaguely it drifted into Benners' mind that the German intended to throw him head foremost into the wires and he shuddered slightly and bent to resist the efforts which his opponent made to grip him.