ry yellow tongues that leapt from
the sand here and there, that writhed in the wind-gusts, but never
diminished.

"Stoop down!" cried the sub., suiting the action to word, "stoop down
and get a mouthful of that smoke--makes you jolly sick and
unconscious in no time if you get enough of it. Tophole bomb,
that--what!"

Then he brought us where those yellow flames leapt and hissed; some
of these he covered with wet sand, and lo! they had ceased to be; but
the moment the sand was kicked away up they leapt again fiercer than
ever.

"We use 'em for bombing Boche dugouts now!" said he; and remembering
the dugouts I had seen, I could picture the awful fate of those
within, the choking fumes, the fire-scorched bodies! Truly the
exponents of Frightfulness have felt the recoil of their own vile
methods.

"This is a lachrymatory!" said the sub., whisking another bomb from
his pocket. "When it pops, run forward and get in the smoke. It'll
sting a bit, but don't rub the tears away--let 'em flow. Don't touch
your eyes, it'll only inflame 'em--just weep! Ready? One, two,
three!" A second explosion louder than the first, a puff of blue
smoke into which I presently ran and then uttered a cry. So sharp, so
excruciating was the pain, that instinctively I raised hand to eyes
but checked myself, and with tears gushing over my cheeks, blind and
agonised, I stumbled away from that hellish vapour. Very soon the
pain diminished, was gone, and looking up through streaming tears I
beheld the sub. nodding and beaming approval.

"Useful things, eh?" he remarked. "A man can't shed tears and shoot
straight, an' he can't weep and fight well, both at the same
time--what? Fritz can be very frightful, but we can be more so when
we want--yes, rather. The Boches have learned that there's no
monopoly in Frightfulness."

In due season we shook hands with our cheery sub., and left him
beaming after us from the threshold of the dingy hut.

Britain has been called slow, old-fashioned, and behind the times,
but to-day she is awake and at work to such mighty purpose that her
once small army is now numbered by the million, an army second to
none in equipment or hardy and dauntless manhood.

From her Home Counties, from her Empire beyond the Seas, her millions
have arisen, brothers in arms henceforth, bonded together by a spirit
of noble self-sacrifice--men grimly determined to suffer wounds and
hardship and death itself, that for those who come after th