Against the lighter grey of the sky one could make out the ragged edge of the sandbags, and a little way off the rosy glow from a brazier showed through the trench mist which hung low over the ground. "The listening post knows we're coming through 'em, sir; they're lying out in front of the bay on the left," volunteered Hawke. "Very well," said Dennis in a low voice, "the idea is this: we want to strike a bee-line--barring shell holes, of course--straight out to their wire. You and Tiddler will keep twenty yards behind to cover us if necessary, but no firing unless you are absolutely obliged. You understand that?" Both men whispered "Yus, sir!" in a ready chorus, and Dennis led the way to the bay in the trench, and climbed on to the fire step. Another figure stood motionless there, his rifle on a sandbag before him, and everything was unusually still. "Anything moving?" said Dennis, in the man's ear. "Haven't known it so quiet all the week, sir," was the reply. "But don't forget there's a machine-gun yonder, thirty paces to the left of the willow stump, and they generally shove one of their posts out in front of that, sir." "I won't forget," said Dennis. "Come on, Dan! Over we go!" And the next moment four dark forms clambered across the parapet and dropped on to their faces on the other side. A little way out, glued to the ground with their eyes and ears wide open, our listening post lay, and as they crawled towards it one of the men tapped with the toe of his boot to let them know that their coming had been heard. A long way off to southward, so far that it came only as a dull booming, the German guns were shelling the French lines intermittently, and there was the sharp bark of rifles to the north. "How long do you calculate it will take us to reach their wire, Baker?" whispered Dennis to the last man of the listening post as he crawled up beside him. "Somewhere about ten minutes, sir," was the reply. "There's one biggish crump-hole straight ahead, and two more on the left a bit farther on, and there's a tidy lot of dead lying out there." Shoulder to shoulder Dennis and Dan crept forward across that No Man's Land, the wind rustling in the tangled grass, bringing with it the acrid odour of unburied corpses. Dan's hand encountered one of them, and he nudged his cousin to work away more to the right. This brought them to the edge of the first crump-hole, and glancing every few yards at the luminous dial, they kept on for some distance unchecked. "We ought to be on it now," murmured Dennis. "It's a quarter of an hour since we left the listening post." And he felt cautiously to the full extent of his arms, but without encountering an upright standard. They did not know it, but they had passed through a gap! "Hold on!" whispered the Australian; "I thought I heard something quite close on the left there." Dennis heard it, too, at the same moment. It was like the solemn rattle of earth falling into a newly made grave.