All this, as I have said, is a heavy strain on mind and body and nerve. It requires a peculiar kind of courage, a lonely, cold-blooded kind of courage. Many men who would do well in a slap-dash fight in the light of day are useless as scouts. Not only are they noisy and impatient, but they cannot stand it. And yet it is no job for a very imaginative man. There are too many things you can imagine, if you once begin. The more you know about it, the more there is to imagine, and the greater the strain becomes. Now Harry had a very vivid imagination, and he knew all about it--and yet he played this game nearly every night we were in the line for three months ... nothing theatrical, you understand, nor even heroic by popular standards, no stabbing affrays, no medals ... but by my standards it _was_ very nearly heroic, and I don't know how he did it. But this was forgotten later on. IV Then Harry had a shock. There was a large sap running out from our line along the crown of a steep ridge. This sap was not held during the day, but at night was peopled with bombers and snipers, and it was a great starting-place for the patrols. One night Harry went out from this sap and crawled down the face of the ridge. It was a dark night, and the Boches were throwing up many flares. One of these came to earth ten yards from Harry. At that moment he was halfway down the slope, crouched on one knee. However, when flares are about, to keep still in any posture is better than to move, so Harry remained rigid. But one of the new scouts behind was just leaving the sap, and hovered uncertainly on the skyline as the light flared and sizzled below. Possibly he was seen, possibly what followed was a chance freak of the Germans. Anyhow, a moment later they opened with every machine-gun in the line, with rifles, rifle-grenades, and high-velocity shells. So venomous was the fire that every man in the line believed--and afterwards hotly asserted--that the whole fury of it was concentrated on his particular yard of trench. Few of us thought of the unhappy scouts lying naked outside. Harry, of course, flattened himself to the ground, and tried to wriggle into a hollow; on level ground you may with luck be safe under wild fire of this kind for a long time. Being on a slope, Harry was hopelessly exposed. 'I lay there,' he told me, 'and simply sweated with funk; you won't believe me, but at one time I could literally _feel_ a stream of machine-gun bullets ruffling my hair, and thudding into the bank just above my back ... and they dropped half a dozen whizz-bangs just in front of me. While it was going on I couldn't have moved for a thousand pounds.... I felt _pinned_ to the ground ... then there was a lull, and I leapt up ... so did old Smith ... bolted for the sap, and simply dived in head first ... they were still blazing off sixteen to the dozen, and it was the mercy of God we weren't hit ... talk about wind-up....