ather over a piece
of ground which was being watered with H.E., but by the mercy of heaven
nothing hit him. He took some fearsome tosses in shell-holes, but
partly erect and partly on all fours he did the fifty yards and tumbled
into a Turkish trench right on top of a dead man.

The contact with that body brought him to his senses. That men could
die at all seemed a comforting, homely thing after that unnatural
pandemonium. The next moment a crump took the parapet of the trench
some yards to his left, and he was half buried in an avalanche.

He crawled out of that, pretty badly cut about the head. He was quite
cool now and thinking hard about his next step. There were men all
around him, sullen dark faces as he saw them when the flares went up.
They were manning the parapets and waiting tensely for something else
than the shelling. They paid no attention to him, for I fancy in that
trench units were pretty well mixed up, and under a bad bombardment no
one bothers about his neighbour. He found himself free to move as he
pleased. The ground of the trench was littered with empty
cartridge-cases, and there were many dead bodies.

The last shell, as I have said, had played havoc with the parapet. In
the next spell of darkness Peter crawled through the gap and twisted
among some snowy hillocks. He was no longer afraid of shells, any more
than he was afraid of a veld thunderstorm. But he was wondering very
hard how he should ever get to the Russians. The Turks were behind him
now, but there was the biggest danger in front.

Then the artillery ceased. It was so sudden that he thought he had
gone deaf, and could hardly realize the blessed relief of it. The
wind, too, seemed to have fallen, or perhaps he was sheltered by the
lee of the hill. There were a lot of dead here also, and that he
couldn't understand, for they were new dead. Had the Turks attacked
and been driven back? When he had gone about thirty yards he stopped
to take his bearings. On the right were the ruins of a large building
set on fire by the guns. There was a blur of woods and the debris of
walls round it. Away to the left another hill ran out farther to the
east, and the place he was in seemed to be a kind of cup between the
spurs. Just before him was a little ruined building, with the sky seen
through its rafters, for the smouldering ruin on the right gave a
certain light. He wondered if the Russian firing-line lay there.

Just then h