Evening was now beginning to fall, and I had lost my whereabouts. Meanwhile, there was no cessation in the roar of artillery. As I struggled along, I saw, not fifty yards away, a group of men. And then I heard, coming through the air, that awful note which cannot be described. It was a whine, a yell, a moan, a shriek, all in one. Beginning on a lower note, it rose higher and higher, then fell again, and suddenly a huge explosive dropped close where the men stood. A moment later, a great mass of stuff went up, forming a tremendous mushroom-shaped body of earth. When it subsided, a curly cloud of smoke filled the air. I was sick and bewildered by what I had passed through, and could scarcely realize the purport of what I had just seen. But presently I saw a man digging, digging, as if for his life. Half mad, and bewildered, I made my way towards him. In different stages of consciousness I saw several soldiers lying. When I arrived close to the spot, I recognized the digger. It was Paul Edgecumbe. Never did I see a man work as he worked. It seemed as though he possessed the strength of three, while all the energy of his being was devoted to the rescue of some one who lay beneath the heap of _debris_. In a bewildered sort of way I realized the situation. Evidently the enemy had located it as an important spot, for shell after shell dropped near by, while the men who had so far recovered their senses as to be able to get away, crawled into the shell hole. 'Come in here, you madman!' one man said. 'You can't get him out, and you'll only get killed.' But Paul Edgecumbe kept on digging, heedless of flying bullets, heedless of death. 'He can't get him out,' said a soldier to me in a dazed sort of way; 'he's buried, that's what he is.' 'Who is it?' I asked. 'Captain Springfield,' replied the man. 'Come in here,' he shouted to Edgecumbe, 'that fellow ain't worth it!' Scarcely realizing what I was doing, and so weak that I could hardly walk, I crawled nearer to my friend. 'You have a hopeless task there,' I remember saying. 'Leave it, and get into the hole there.' 'Is that you, Luscombe? I shall save him, I am sure I shall. I was buried once myself, so I know what it means. There, I have got him!' He threw down the tool with which he was digging, and with his hands pulled away the stones and earth which lay over the body. I don't quite recollect what took place after that. I have a confused remembrance of lying in the shell hole, while the tornado went on. I seemed to see, as in a dream, batches of soldiers pass by me in the near distance; some of them Germans, while others were our own men. Everything was confused, unreal. Even now I could not swear to what took place,--what I thought I saw and heard may not be in fact a reality at all, but only phantoms of the mind. Flesh and blood, and nerves and brain were utterly exhausted, and although I was not wounded, I was more dead than alive.