The spurt of fire directed upwards at an acute angle was followed by the hideous tearing screech of a huge projectile. A British gun, so cleverly screened that none of the detachment was aware of its existence, had just been fired. "It's only 'Gentle Gerty' saying good night to the Boches, sir," explained the guide. "Now, sir, single file, and no smoking in the ranks." The Tommies, throwing away their cigarette ends and knocking out their pipes, set out on the last stage of their journey. They were now at the Front. CHAPTER II THE COMMUNICATION TRENCH FOR the next fifty yards Private Ralph Setley's range of vision was bounded in front by the steel helmet, bulging pack and hunched shoulders of the man preceding him. Right and left nothing but fields lavishly pitted with shell holes. The only sounds, besides the ever-thunderous roar of the guns, the quelching of the men's boots in the mud. "Left incline." The platoon wriggled sideways like an enormous worm. The reason was soon not only apparent to the eye but to the nostrils. A mule, struck down by a shell, was lying half buried in the mud, its legs sticking up grotesquely in the air. Presently the man preceding Setley seemed to disappear from view. The Tommies in front were descending the steps leading to the long communication trench. For nearly a mile the only way of gaining the reserve and firing trenches was by means of the sunken gallery. Eight feet down Setley descended. His feet no longer sank to his ankles in mud. The nailed soles of his boots grated upon wire-netting, that, stretched across the seemingly endless line of "duck-boards," prevented the men slipping on the lively pieces of boarding into the slime that formed the major portion of the floor of the trench. On either hand the stiff, slimy walls of clay, topped by rows of sandbags, threatened to collapse and bury the users of the narrow and tortuous way, for in order to prevent the communicating trench being enfiladed by hostile fire it was a continued succession of twists and turns. Still the rain poured down remorselessly upon the great-coated Tommies. Here and there portions of the parapet had slipped bodily into the trench, necessitating a tedious clamber over a heap of moist clay of the consistency of soft putty. Before a hundred yards of the narrow way had been traversed George Anderson, who was immediately in front of Setley, stepped incautiously upon the edge of one of the duck-boards. In a trice the section of woodwork tilted, deporting the man up to his thighs in mud and water, while Ralph, stopping abruptly to avoid the tilted end of the board, was cannoned into by the man behind who happened to be Private Alderhame. The next instant both were sprawling on top of the luckless Anderson, driving his writhing body still deeper into the mud.