Park took up his tale. "He's over there with the C.O. now," and switching: "Shell splinter got him in the eye. Guess it's gone and maybe the other one too." "By----!" he burst out passionately: "I hope it don't. He's been damn good to me--and to you fellows too," he added fiercely, while his lower lip quivered. I think all stared anywhere but at Park, in a curious embarrassment. "Got it goin' from one trench to another to see about the rations comin' up instead of stayin' in like a 'dug-out wallah.' Got out on top of the ground, walked across an' stopped one," he added bitterly. A considerable draft of "old boys," ruddy of face and fresh from hospital, together with some more new men reached us that night. We "went up" again with the dusk of the following night and "took over" our previous trenches in front of Belle-waarde Wood. We were told that the Shropshires had been rather badly cut up in the interval of their occupation by a further course of intense bombardment and some fierce infantry fighting. Nevertheless, the trenches had been put into much better shape since our earlier occupancy of them, so that what with our work that night they were by the morning of the seventh in fairly good shape. The night was not unusual in any way. There was the regular amount of shelling, of star shells, of machine gun and rifle fire, and of course, casualties. Those we always had, be it ever so quiet. Even the morning "Stand-to" with that mysterious dread of unknown dangers that it invariably brought gave us nothing worse than an hour of chilly waiting--and later, the smoke of the Germans' cooking fires. There were none for us. It was as simple as algebra. Smoke attracted undue artillery attention--the Germans had artillery; we had not. They had fires; we had not. The day rolled by smoothly enough. Except for the fresh graves and a certain number of unburied dead the small-pox appearance of the shell-pitted ground about might have been thought to have been of ancient origin; so filled with water were the shell holes and so large had they grown as a result of the constant sloughing in of their sodden banks. During all these days the German fire on the salient at large had continued as fiercely as before but had spared us its severest trials. The night of the seventh passed to all outward appearance pretty much in the same manner as the preceding one. CHAPTER V THE EIGHTH OF MAY AND THE LAST STAND OF THE PRINCESS PATS Morning in the Trenches--The Artillery Preparation for the Infantry Attack--The P.P's Chosen to Stem the Tide--The Trust of a Lady--Chaos--Corporal Dover--The Manner in Which Some Men Kill and Others Die.