wrap up a p-parcel to send home, sir. I wa-anted
to send back some socks and underclothes to be darned. I'm very sorry,
sir."

"Sorry? Sorry be damned, and your underclothes too!" And the Battery
Major, who had more bad language at his disposal than most men in the
Army, for once forgot he was in the presence of a senior officer.

* * * * *

While the Major, his subaltern, and three men with a roll of wire wended
their sorry way back to the battery, Archibald Smith, surprised and
hurt, sat in his dug-out, amusing himself by making fierce bayonet
thrusts at his parcel, and alternately wishing it were the Major or
himself.

XXIV

THE NIGHTLY ROUND

I swear, and rub my eyes.

"Dusk, sir," says the Sergeant-Major with a smile of comprehension, and
he lets fall the waterproof sheet which acts as a door to my dug-out. I
yawn prodigiously, get up slowly from my bed--one of two banks of earth
that run parallel down each side of my muddy hovel, rather after the
fashion of seats down each side of an omnibus--and go out into the
trench, along which the command "Stand to arms" has just been passed.
The men leave their letters and their newspapers; Private Webb, who
earned his living in times of peace by drawing thin, elongated ladies in
varying stages of undress for fashion catalogues, puts aside his
portrait of the Sergeant, who is still smiling with ecstasy at a tin of
chloride of lime; the obstinate sleepers are roused, to a great flow of
bad language, and all stand to their arms in the possibility of an
attack.

It is a monotonous time, that hour of waiting until darkness falls, for
gossip is scarce in the trenches, and the display of fireworks in the
shape of German star shells has long since ceased to interest us--always
excepting those moments when we are in front of our trench on some
patrol. Away to the left, where the artillery have been busy all day,
the shelling slackens as the light fades, and the rifle shots grow more
and more frequent. Presently the extra sentries are posted--one man in
every three--the disgusted working parties are told off to their work of
filling sandbags or improving the communication trenches, and the long,
trying night begins.

All down the line the German bullets spin overhead or crack like whips
against our sandbags, sending little clods of earth down into the
trench; all down the line we stand on our firing platforms, and answer
back to th