I followed Cooke out through the sap and up the trench a little way to where it turned sharply to avoid a large boulder. Just in front of this boulder was some short, prickly underbrush. Cooke parted the bushes cautiously with his hand, and motioned me to come closer. I did and through the opening he pointed out the enemy trench about four hundred yards away, and about thirty yards in front of it a little clump of bushes. "Just in front of those bushes," said Cooke, "there's a sniper's dugout. Keep your eyes open to-morrow and you ought to get some of them." I noted the place for the next day, and walked down to the sap with Cooke. There I shook hands with him, wished him good luck, and returned to my platoon. That night I had to go out on listening patrol between the lines. At one o'clock my turn came. An Irish sergeant came along the trench for me to guide me out to the listening post. I went with him a short distance along the trench, picked up four others, then with a shoulder from a comrade, we got over the parapet. The listening post was about a hundred yards away. We had gone only a few yards when we heard firing coming from that direction, first one shot followed by twenty or thirty in quick succession, then silence. A man stumbled out of the darkness immediately in front of us. He was panting and excited. It was a messenger from the corporal that we were going to relieve. He had been walking along without the least suspicion of danger when he had run full tilt into a party of fifteen or sixteen of the enemy. He had dropped down immediately and yelled to one of his men to go back to the trench with word. We followed the panting messenger to the post. The enemy had now disappeared. We opened rapid fire in the direction in which they had gone. Evidently it was right, for in a few seconds they returned it, wounding one man. For about five minutes we kept up firing, with what success we could not tell, but at any rate we had the satisfaction of driving off a superior force. Those two hours straining through the darkness were not particularly pleasant. I did not know what moment or from what direction the enemy might come, and I knew that if he did come it would be in force. Apparently the whole thing was unplanned, because during the remainder of my two hours, although I peered unceasingly in all directions, I could see nothing, nor could I hear the slightest sound. Evidently Johnny Turk was willing to let well enough alone. That night when I returned to the trench I was told that the next night at dark we were to go into dugouts.