Not so far, sir, but it's bloomin' difficult to 'ear to-night--the rain
makes such a patter on the chalk, and it's fillin' up the shell 'oles a
fair knock-art."

"Well now, look here," said Dennis impressively, "I'm going to shove
along, and I want you both to listen with your eyes. You know the Morse
code, and if you see anything straight in front of you, pass the word
back to Mr. Wetherby on the parapet behind."

"But you ain't goin' alone, sir! You'll let one of us come wiv yer!"

"I am going alone, Hawke. I marked the lie of the ground before the
light went, and it's as easy as walking down Piccadilly. If I can't find
out what I want I shall come back; anyhow, look and listen!" And he
glided off into the rain and was lost to view long before the slither of
his footsteps had died away.

Two hundred yards separated friend and foe; two hundred yards of
pulverised No Man's Land, now soaked like a sponge. About midway
stretched an unfinished German trench, from which our guns had driven
the enemy before they had had time to complete it. It was little more
than a wet shallow ditch now, with a line of sandbags on the British
side, and when Dennis had crossed it he continued his perilous course on
hands and knees.

It was a zigzag course to avoid the thirty or forty shell holes that
our guns had made, and as he wormed himself forward the darkness of the
night and the strange silence of the enemy batteries on that sector
confirmed him more than ever in his conviction that something was in
preparation.

The trench he was approaching was of quite unusual strength, with a
formidable redoubt making a salient in one place, and as he reached the
foot of it he knew that a wall of sandbags nearly fifteen feet high
towered above his head.

He had seen that before the light went. Now, in the pitchy darkness of
the drenching rain, as he crouched at the foot of the wall he could hear
the hoarse murmur of many voices behind it, as it seemed to him.

He looked back across that dreary No Man's Land, and then again at the
barrier in front of him, and, carrying his life in his hand as he well
knew, began to worm his way up the face of the sandbags.

The actual climb presented little difficulty to an athlete; the danger
was if a rocket should soar into the sky and some sharp eye discover
him.

But the desire to learn something of the enemy's movements from their
conversation deadened all sense of risk, until he had reached the las