ve us, the branch of an apple-tree, and with one
shoulder brushed the severed roots of the same tree. Then the trench led
outward, and we passed beneath railroad tracks, the ties reposing on
air, and supported by, instead of supporting, the iron rails.

We had been moving between garden walls, cellar walls; sometimes hidden
by ruins, sometimes diving like moles into tunnels. We remained on no
one level, or for any time continued in any one direction. It was
entirely fantastic, entirely unreal. It was like visiting a new race of
beings, who turn day into night; who, like bats, molochs, and wolves,
hide in caves and shun the sunlight.

By the ray of an electric torch we saw where these underground people
store their food. Where, against siege, are great casks of water,
dungeons packed with ammunition, more dungeons, more ammunition. We saw,
always by the shifting, pointing finger of the electric torch, sleeping
quarters underground, dressing stations for the wounded underground. In
niches at every turn were gas-extinguishers. They were as many, as much
as a matter of course, as fire-extinguishers in a modern hotel. They
were exactly like those machines advertised in seed catalogues for
spraying fruit-trees. They are worn on the back like a knapsack. Through
a short rubber hose a fluid attacks and dissipates the poison gases.

The sun set, and we proceeded in the light of a full moon. It needed
only this to give to our journey the unreality of a nightmare. Long
since I had lost all sense of direction. It was not only a maze and
labyrinth, but it held to no level. At times, concealed by walls of
chalk, we walked erect, and then, like woodchucks, dived into earthen
burrows. For a long distance we crawled, bending double through a
tunnel. At intervals lamps, as yet unlit, protruded from either side,
and to warn us of these from the darkness a voice would call, "attention
_a gauche_," "attention _a droite_." The air grew foul and the pressure
on the ear-drums like that of the subway under the North River. We came
out and drew deep breaths as though we had been long under water.

We were in the first trench. It was, at places, from three hundred to
forty yards distant from the Germans. No one spoke, or only in whispers.
The moonlight turned the men at arms into ghosts. Their silence added to
their unreality. I felt like Rip Van Winkle hemmed in by the goblin
crew of Hendrik Hudson. From somewhere near us, above or below, to t