"How about grub?" enquired Penfold, as the men regained the safety of their own lines. "There's no barrage now? Why can't they bring our tommy up to us?" "Could do with a good meal myself," said Sefton. "Fortunately, we were served out with bully-beef before we arrived. You can have some of mine." "Thanks, awfully," replied his new chum. "I'll accept; but, remember, it's bad policy. Generosity is all very well, but here it's each man for himself in the grub line. You can't blame a half-starving fellow sneaking any food that he finds lying about, you know." "How is it that you're short of rations?" asked Alderhame. "Goodness only knows. The Huns were going it pretty hot all day and during the earlier part of this evening. Perhaps our ration party copped it. Everything has to be brought up by hand in this section of the line," replied Penfold. "Well, let's foot it, before the guns start again. The Boches will be pretty wild after this little affair." Mingled with a jostling throng of exultant Tommies and dejected prisoners, the three made their way along the communication trench to their dug-out. "What luck!" ejaculated Penfold, stopping short at a heap of disordered sand-bags and splintered timber that marked the site of their temporary abode. "Our dug-out has been properly strafed. We would have all gone West by this time if we'd been inside. But I say, you fellows; what price grub, now?" CHAPTER IV GRUB PENFOLD spoke of his escape without emotion. He had been long enough check by jowl with death to express no surprise. He had merely remarked that it was a lucky chance that the occupants of the shelled dug-out had not been inside when the heavy howitzer missile had demolished it. What did seriously annoy him was the loss of the promised food. Ralph Setley, although by this time ravenously hungry, was fervently thankful for his escape. Already the reaction of the raid into the German trenches was beginning to tell. Shorn of excitement of the wild rush over the top, the horrors of that nocturnal excursion rose up in his mind. The knowledge that he had bayoneted a fellow-creature, although he were an enemy and a brutal Hun, worried him. "Suppose the fellow would have done me in if I hadn't got him first," he soliloquized. Then, aloud: "What are you jabbering about, Alderhame?" The former actor was stamping up and down the duck-boards, now encrusted with a thin coating of ice:-- "Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, Thou dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot." "That's _As You Like It!_ chum. It aptly describes our condition. Horribly cold, and benefits in the shape of bully-beef gone, though not forgotten. Where's our next lodging?" The stream of prisoners and wounded Tommies had now dwindled. Penfold, addressing a sergeant, stated his case. "D'ye think I'm a Cook's tourist guide?" snapped the N.C.O. "Turn in where you can. There are a good many half empty dug-outs now, I'm thinking."