"Shut up; there's the skipper standing there."

The conversation stopped; but the latter part worried me not a little.
Water-bottle empty, good Lord! and no more water for forty-eight
hours.

All of a sudden the sky was illuminated. Half a dozen Very lights went
up in rapid succession: we were discovered!

A moment or two later from two different points, three reds and a
green light went up, falling in our direction. Every man stopped work
and looked up in amazement. We were in for it; we wanted no telling.

"Dig like hell!" I whispered hoarsely, hurrying along the line of
wondering men.

But they wanted no urging this time, and every man set to work with
feverish energy.

Then the bombardment commenced, and in a few minutes the air was
filled with whistling shells, screeching through the night and making
the darkness hideous.

We were only a foot below the surface of the ground. Once again I
hastened along the line:

"Dig like hell!"

Lights were going up in rapid succession, and the German line whence
they came appeared only a couple of hundred yards in front, and seemed
to form a semicircle around my left flank.

Clack! Clack! Clack! What was that?--Rifles! My sentry groups were
firing. Again the rattle of rifles, this time all along the line of
sentry groups.

"Stand to!"

Every man seized his rifle and crouched in the pit he had dug and
faced his front. We waited: the bombardment had stopped, and the crack
of the rifles alone disturbed the night.

I drew my revolver and waited in breathless suspense for the sudden
rush which seemed imminent.

Were our preparations to be nipped in the bud, after all? Would it be
a sudden rush; a desperate hand-to-hand fight?--and then, what then?

The minutes passed like hours in an agony of suspense, and then,
unable to bear the strain any longer, I crept cautiously forward into
the inky darkness towards one of the sentry groups to find out what
was amiss.

"Halt! Who is there?"

"O.C., B Company."

"Advance!"

"What's up?" I asked, sliding into the shell-hole beside the corporal.

"There seemed to be a patrol moving about in front; it's all quiet
now, sir."

"All right; double the sentries for the next hour."

I returned to the line and ordered the men to continue digging.

The bombardment continued, but by and by we began to grow accustomed
to the din. Several casualties occurred; but still the work of digging
in continued.

Time was getting on,