you? Now, you ask him if he'd like to
surrender, and if you don't understand what he says or he seems
doubtful like, put your clasp knife in there." Reginald felt a prick
under his right ear. "Right in--you take me. Get up, and we'll do it
again."

"Where did you learn that, Shorty?" asked our pupil as he got up.

"A Jap taught me that an' a good few more in Los Angeles. Jujitsu, he
said it was; dam good sense I call it. Come on--it takes practice."

And Reginald Simpkins practised. With growing confidence he practised
day in, day out. Mogg's had faded into the limbo of forgotten things;
his horizon consisted of a foetid shell hole, a panting, writhing Hun
fighting for his life in the darkness of the night, a cracking arm and
then . . . His imagination never took him beyond that point.
Sufficient of the old Adam of gentility still remained to prevent him
picturing the final tableau. You see, Reginald Simpkins had not as yet
killed anything larger than a rat, and even then he had bungled. . . .

III

AN IMPERSONAL DEMONSTRATION

As was proper and fitting his first head was gained cold-bloodedly and
from a distance. It was his blooding into the ranks of the snipers.
His probationary period was over; Shorty Bill had professed himself
satisfied. The battalion had moved from the place in which we found
them, and had gone farther north. The country was flat and desolate;
periodically the ground would shake and tremble, and in No Man's Land
chalk and rubble and the salmon-pink fumes of ammonal would shoot
upwards, showing that the men of the underworld still carried on.
Slag-heaps, sandbags, and desolate mounds of earth formed the scenery
for his debut, while the orchestra consisted of rum jars and rifle
grenades.

D Company it was who had lost a sergeant through a German sniper; and
the fact was duly reported. Now when a German sniper takes the life of
a man in a battalion which goes in for the art itself, it is an
unwritten law that from that moment a blood feud exists between the
German and English snipers opposite. Though it takes a fortnight to
carry out, yet death is the only finish.

Wherefore, one morning, just as the first pale glints of dawn came
stealing over the silent land, Reginald Simpkins climbed carefully into
a great mound of sandbags which had conveniently been deposited just
behind the front line by the miners. But it is doubtful if Miss
Belsize of the camisole department wou