He knew it would be wiser for him to wait until nightfall and take advantage of the moonlight; but the desire to rejoin his men was too strong to be resisted; and after cautiously peering over the undergrowth he crept from his concealment, and dodged from bush to bush until he reached the edge of the wood. There the hum of voices warned him that he was only a few yards from the parados of an enemy trench--and not a very deep one at that--for as he parted the brambles behind which he cowered, he could see the round forage caps and shaven heads in front of him. For an hour he lay there, watching and listening, hoping against hope that our fellows would deliver a frontal attack on the trench, which was thinly held. Once, indeed, the alarm was given; the enemy manned the fire-step, and the machine-gunners were on the _qui vive_; but after a while the threatened danger had evidently passed, for they stood down again, greatly relieved. Every now and then a British shell burst in the wood behind him, tearing off branches and great strips of bark, and bringing the slender trees down with a crash. "This won't do, Dennis Dashwood, my friend," he murmured. "The way is barred here. Let us see how far their trench extends. I'll swear that was a British cheer on the left." And he crawled back again deeper into the trees, whose shadows were now falling in long lines as the afternoon waned. Taking his bearings, he worked his way from shell hole to shell hole, now passing through a belt of timber comparatively unscathed, now encountering a stretch that had been heavily shelled, where the trees seemed to stand on their heads with their roots in the air. Always keeping his eyes on the sky, across which the clouds were drifting, he suddenly found himself on the edge of a rolling strip of open country sloping gradually down in what he imagined to be the direction of the British line; but to attempt to cross it would have been suicidal, for a rain of German shells burst furiously among the neglected fields. The wood, straggling out still eastward, seemed to indicate the route he must follow; and, without knowing it, he crossed the identical road our troops had taken earlier in the day when they went up to the capture of Bazentin village. If he could only pass the limit of the German barrage he had an idea that he would find himself among friends before long; and he was right, although the manner of his meeting them was very unexpected. He paused as the trees suddenly came to an end, and was astonished to see a riderless horse trotting towards him. His astonishment increased as he recognised the saddlery to be British. There was no other living creature in sight. A waving wheatfield, among which some scarlet poppies were growing, marked the skyline, beyond which the ground fell away, and far off in the distance across the wheat was the top of another wood.