t he wasn't
afraid himself; but that a man afraid that he could not face death
could yet contemplate certain death by his own hand, was completely
beyond him.

Halliday drew his breath in a deep sigh.

"We'll say no more about it," he said. "I feel better now; it's
something to know I always have that to fall back on at the worst. I'll
be all right now--until it comes the minute to climb over the parapet."

It was nearly nine o'clock, and word was passed down the line for every
man to get down as low as he could in the bottom of the trench. The
trench they were about to attack was only forty or fifty yards away,
and since the Heavies as well as the Field guns were to bombard, there
was quite a large possibility of splinters and fragments being thrown
by the lyddite back as far as the British trench. At nine, sharp to the
tick of the clock, the _rush, rush, rush_ of a field battery's shells
passed overhead. Because the target was so close, the passing shells
seemed desperately near to the British parapet, as indeed they actually
were. The rush of shells and the crash of their explosion sounded in
the forward trench before the boom of the guns which fired them
traveled to the British trench. Before the first round of this opening
battery had finished, another and another joined in, and then, in a
deluge of noise, the intense bombardment commenced.

Crouching low in the bottom of the trench, half deafened by the uproar,
the men waited for the word to move. The concentrated fire on this
portion of front indicated clearly to the Germans that an attack was
coming, and where it was to be expected. The obviously correct
procedure for the gunners was of course to have bombarded many sections
of front so that no certain clew would be given as to the point of the
coming attack. But this was in the days when shells were very, very
precious things, and gunners had to grit their teeth helplessly, doling
out round by round, while the German gun- and rifle-fire did its worst.
The Germans, then, could see now where the attack was concentrated, and
promptly proceeded to break it up before it was launched. Shells began
to sweep the trench where the Hotwater Guards lay, to batter at their
parapet, and to prepare a curtain of fire along their front.

Everton lay and listened to the appalling clamor; but when the word was
passed round to get ready, he rose to his feet and climbed to the
firing-step without any overpowering sense of fear