ded to make of him an
interesting study. Supremely apathetic to friend or foe, Generals or
Huns, he did his shift without comment and, as far as could be seen,
without thought.

"Where are you putting the earth?" asked the Sapper after watching for a
while.

"Round corner, in a 'ole." The speaker pointed with his pipe, and the
subject dropped.

The officer turned away smiling slightly, and decided on the inspection
of the rum jar. The answer was clear and succinct, even if not couched
in the language of the old army discipline. He inspected the hole, and,
finding it was at the back of the trench, in a crater that was formed
nightly by German _minenwerfer_, and that more earth there not only would
not block the trench but, _mirabile dicta_, would be an actual advantage,
he passed on and shortly came to a passage leading out of the front of
the trench.

The passage was labelled Sap No. 130, and presented exactly the same
appearance as the boyaux which ran out of the support line to the front
trench. Only when one got into it did the difference become apparent,
for whereas the boyaux had continued until finally opening into a new
trench, the sap was a cul-de-sac, and finished abruptly in a little
covered-in recess built into a miniature mountain of newly-thrown-up
earth. And this great, tumbled mass of soil was the near lip of Vesuvius
crater--blown up half way between the two front lines.

Over the top of the mountain there was no passage. A man standing or
crawling there in daytime would have been in full view of German snipers
at a range of forty yards; while had he accomplished it in safety, he
would have slithered down the farther side into a great cavity shaped
like an egg-cup, at the bottom of which a pool of dirty, stagnant water
was slowly forming. Moreover, if we imagine the man continuing his
journey and climbing up the other side, he would run the gauntlet of the
English snipers as he topped the farther lip, before reaching the German
sap which ran out in just such a similar cul-de-sac to the one already
described.

Thus are craters consolidated; each side holds the lip nearest to them,
and hurls curses and bombs at his opponents on the other. The distance
between the sapheads is perhaps twenty or twenty-five yards, instead of
the hundred odd of the parent fire-trenches; and any closer
acquaintanceship is barred by the egg-cup crater, which stretches between
them.

"Keep down, sir--well down.