For utterly impossible as a permanent observation post it undoubtedly was, and my friend, having verified his geography, left it with a feeling of deep thankfulness at having escaped unhurt. But his adventures were by no means at an end, he had still to find a situation of comparative safety from which he could observe when required under more restful conditions. The first place he selected was a house in the Enclosure, as the buildings near the foot of the Pylons have been termed. This also had been used by the enemy for the same purpose, for the walls were sandbagged, the lower floors were shored up with pit-props, and the basement had evidently been occupied by a fairly large party. Curiously enough, the house was in quite good repair, the walls and half the roof were standing, in contrast to the wreckage that lay around it. Here the explorer received what he describes as "the shock of his life," for on opening the door of one of the upper rooms he found, sprawling over a table as though just fallen asleep, the body of a German officer, still holding a pencil with which he had been addressing a post-card to a girl in Magdeburg. So lifelike was the attitude that it was impossible to realize at first that he was dead, notwithstanding the jagged hole above the temple where the fragment had entered and the blood that stained his right side. From this room a good view of the desired stretch of country could be obtained, there was a plentiful supply of sandbags ready filled in the house, and it seemed in every way desirable. But, just as my friend had determined upon converting it to his own uses, a (fortunately) small shell, evidently intended for the Pylons, but a little "over," entered the ground floor and burst there, wrecking the staircase, bringing down ceilings and tiles all over the house and smashing what was probably the last pane of glass in Loos. If this place was going to play long-stop for all the byes that passed the Pylons, it was distinctly unhealthy. He clambered down the wreckage of the stairs and looked round for a more likely spot, settling upon a tall house some little distance away. But here again he was doomed to disappointment. As he walked towards it a light howitzer shell sang over his head and burst a hundred yards beyond his goal. Instinct told him that this was the first round of a series of which his projected O.P. was the target. Even as he realized that he was standing about the same distance short of the place as the first round had fallen over, and in a direct line, the second shell passed so close to him that he swears he felt the wind of it, and burst in a manure-heap not ten yards away. Thanking heaven that it had found a soft billet that muffled the force of its explosion, he turned and bolted, having no further interest in observing that particular series, the components of the manure-heap dropping in a shower about him.