d get through unharmed. Again, it might
not be you. The egotism of unconscious thought; the indisputable truth
of Darwin's "Will to Life."

At Rues Vertes the Battalion halted. The nerves were highly strung, men
gazed about with slight shudders as one is wont to do in the midst of
weird ghost stories when someone comes softly, unexpectedly down the
darkened stairs.

What was the unshakeable phenomenon? Was it the moaning of a lost wind
in the dark woods that reacted so upon that rudimentary, instinctive
Fear of the Unknown, the Night; inherited from the primitive man who
watched trembling throughout the wakeful hours when Fear was his sole
companion?

"I--I don't fancy this," Tich whispered hoarsely, "it puts a feelin' of
death on me." Fatal prophecy!

The Ten Hundred carried on, crossed a swampy field, and moving up nearer
the line, filed once again into the dismal occupation of trenches newly
dug, affording inadequate cover and protected by wire that would have to
be raised by their own efforts.

Winter was already getting a grip on the land, nights were cruelly cold
and days but little better. And this first night at Masnieres was
frequented with that sensation of ill-omen pervading the minds of many
who felt--as Tich had said--somehow that their days were drawing to a
close. They would lie unmoving for an hour obsessed by their thoughts;
the brain flying with its lightning rapidity from picture to picture
resurrected from a happy past. In words would some communicate their
apprehensions.

"I feel--rotten to-night. Something's got on my nerves...."

But the rum ration soon soared the depressed spirits. Man is prey to his
inherited instincts. Even Tich recovered his nerve.

"I only felt like that once before," he said, "that's when I was
spliced."

"Wot, frightened of something?"

"Yes, and," gloomily in abrupt relapse, "it came right, too." The
cherubic tones of Stumpy emanated from somewhere.

"Wot I say is, respect a man's principles. Any teetotalers about yere
wot wants to find a 'appy 'ome for their rum ration? Wot I say is,
respe--yes, yere I am, old son, pass the sinful liquor over."

Half an hour later he warbled a jumbled melody:

"In Ari--Arizona. It's there a girl in Ari--Ari...."

VII

HOLDING THE LINE

MASNIERES

The night was far more lively than any preceding. Fritz trench mortar
batteries sending over a series of particularly nastily ranged shells.
This is a type of shel