I can imagine the breathless interest with which the garrison in the trenches observed the loading of the mortar, the swift retirement from its vicinity, and the stunned confusion following the first shot. It went off with a stupendous roar, belching forth smoke and flame. The canister, turning over and over in the air, was seen to describe a mighty arc and fall upon a ruined house behind the German lines and there explode mightily, demolishing the place as completely and spectacularly as if a mine had been sprung beneath it. A great cheer burst forth. The delighted soldiers promptly poured in "fifteen rounds rapid," and a machine-gun rattled through a belt in honour of the occasion and to follow up the bomb. The new weapon was voted a huge success. It was fired five times in all, two bombs failing to explode, one excavating a ton or so of earth from the centre of No Man's Land, whilst the fifth fell plump into the German fire-trench, levelling it for half-a-dozen yards in either direction and sending high into the air a vast shower of earth, rent sandbags, timber, and human fragments. Then, just as a sixth projectile was being loaded, the German artillery got to work. A storm of "whizz-bang" shells hurtled over, exploding everywhere--in the air, on the ground, and sometimes against the high parapet, which was sent flying. Two batteries of heavy howitzers concentrated a slow, deliberate fire, dropping 5.2 and 9-inch shells in the zone of the mortar, which was buried under tons of earth. At length the bombardment ceased, and rescue parties came to dig out those men whose dug-outs had fallen in upon them or who had been buried in the ruins of the trench. X---- had remained by his mortar and was rescued unconscious. Yet, with the tenaciousness of his breed, he came back again--having spent a week at the field ambulance's barn hospital and a few days at his company's quarters--armed with a third and more powerful mortar. This time he had taken the precaution to provide himself with smokeless powder. The German artillery observers, however, were on the look-out for him, and although there was no longer a mountain of smoke to serve as a target, the position of the mortar was disclosed by the enormous roar of its discharge, which could be heard four miles away. Not five minutes elapsed before half-a-dozen batteries, informed by telephone, opened a tremendous fire and speedily rendered the vicinity untenable. Casualties were high, and X---- and his weapon lost favour with the neighbouring infantry. IV--"BIG-BANG" HIS ONLY FRIEND