ith my two hands--to tear and
rend, and have the consciousness that I flash back, like a telegraph
message from my satiated hands to my eager brain that was spurring me on.

But that was not to be. I knew it, and I grew calmer, presently. The
roughness of the going helped me to do that, for it took all a man's
wits and faculties to grope his way along the path we were following
now. Indeed, it was no path at all that led us to the Pimple--the
topmost point of Vimy Ridge, which changed hands half a dozen times
in the few minutes of bloody fighting that had gone on here during
the great attack.

The ground was absolutely riddled with shell holes here. There must
have been a mine of metal underneath us. What path there was
zigzagged around. It had been worn to such smoothness as it possessed
since the battle, and it evaded the worst craters by going around
them. My madness was passed now, and a great sadness had taken its
place. For here, where I was walking, men had stumbled up with
bullets and shells raining about them. At every step I trod ground
that must have been the last resting-place of some Canadian soldier,
who had died that I might climb this ridge in a safety so
immeasurably greater than his had been.

If it was hard for us to make this climb, if we stumbled as we walked,
what had it been for them? Our breath came hard and fast--how had it
been with them? Yet they had done it! They had stormed the ridge the
Huns had proudly called impregnable. They had taken, in a swift rush,
that nothing could stay, a position the Kaiser's generals had assured
him would never be lost--could never be reached by mortal troops.

The Pimple, for which we were heading now, was an observation post at
that time. There there was a detachment of soldiers, for it was an
important post, covering much of the Hun territory beyond. A major of
infantry was in command; his headquarters were a large hole in the
ground, dug for him by a German shell--fired by German gunners who had
no thought further from their minds than to do a favor for a British
officer. And he was sitting calmly in front of his headquarters,
smoking a pipe, when we reached the crest and came to the Pimple.

He was a very calm man, that major, given, I should say, to the
greatest repression. I think nothing would have moved him from that
phlegmatic calm of his! He watched us coming, climbing and making
hard going of it. If he was amused he gave no sign, as he puffed at