specially, business was run on very different lines. Then every
man in the forward firing-trench had a certain number of rounds to fire
each night, even although he had no definite target to fire at.
Magnesium flares and pistol lights were kept going almost without
ceasing, while the artillery made a regular practice of loosing off a
stated number of rounds per night. The Germans worked on fairly similar
lines, and as a result it can easily be imagined that any patrol or
reconnoitering work between the lines was apt to be exceedingly
unhealthy. Actually there were parts on the line where no feet had
pressed the ground of No Man's Land for weeks on end, unless in open
attack or counter-attack, and of these feet there were a good many that
never returned to the trench, and a good many others that did return
only to walk straight to the nearest aid-post and hospital.

The neutral ground at this period of Ainsley's patrol was a sea of mud,
broken by heaped earth and yawning shell-craters; strung about with
barbed wire entanglements, littered with equipments and with packs
which had been cut from or slipped from the shoulders of the wounded;
dotted more or less thickly with the bodies of British or German who
had fallen there and could not be reached alive by any stretcher-bearer
parties. Unpleasant as was the coming in contact with these bodies,
Ainsley knew that their being there was of considerable service to him.
He and his men crawled in a scattered line, and whenever the upward
trail of sparks showed that a flare was about to burst into light, the
whole party dropped and lay still until the light had burned itself
out. Any Germans looking out could only see their huddled forms lying
as still as the thickly scattered dead; could not know but what the
party was of their number.

It was necessary to move with the most extreme caution, because the
slightest motion might eaten the attention of a look-out, and would
certainly draw the fire of a score of rifles and probably of a
machine-gun. The first part of the journey was the worst, because they
had to cover a perfectly open piece of ground on their way to the
slight depression which Ainsley knew ran curling across the neutral
ground. Wide and shallow at the end nearest the British trench, this
depression narrowed and deepened as it ran slantingly towards the
German; halfway across, it turned abruptly and continued towards the
German side on another slant, and at a point