wears a broad canvas belt full of pockets: each pocket
contains a bomb.

Simson briefly outlines the situation. Our fire-trench here runs round
the angle of an orchard, which brings it uncomfortably close to the
Germans. The Germans are quite as uncomfortable about the fact as we
are--some of us are rather inclined to overlook this important feature
of the case--and they have run a sap out towards the nearest point of
the Orchard Trench (so our aeroplane observers report), in order to
supervise our movements more closely.

"It may only be a listening-post," explains Simson to his bombers,
"with one or two men in it. On the other hand, they may be collecting
a party to rush us. There are some big shell-craters there, and they
may be using one of them as a saphead. Anyhow, our orders are to go
out to-night and see. If we find the sap, with any Germans in it, we
are to bomb them out of it, and break up the sap as far as possible.
Advance, and follow me."

The party steals out. The night is very still, and a young and
inexperienced moon is making a somewhat premature appearance
behind the Bosche trenches. The ground is covered with weedy
grass--disappointed hay--which makes silent progress a fairly simple
matter. The bombers move forward in extended order searching for the
saphead. Simson, in the centre, pauses occasionally to listen, and his
well-drilled line pauses with him. Sergeant Carfrae calls stertorously
upon the left. Out on the right is young M'Snape, tingling.

They are half-way across now, and the moon is marking time behind a
cloud.

Suddenly there steals to the ears of M'Snape--apparently from the
recesses of the earth just in front of him--a deep, hollow sound,
the sound of men talking in some cavernous space. He stops dead, and
signals to his companions to do likewise. Then he listens again. Yes,
he can distinctly hear guttural voices, and an occasional _clink,
clink_. The saphead has been reached, and digging operations are in
progress.

A whispered order comes down the line that M'Snape is to
"investigate." He wriggles forward until his progress is arrested by a
stunted bush. Very stealthily he rises to his knees and peers over. As
he does so, a chance star-shell bursts squarely over him, and comes
sizzling officiously down almost on to his back. His head drops like
a stone into the bush, but not before the ghostly magnesium flare has
shown him what he came out to see--a deep shell-crater. The crat