evening----"

"Some religious swabs," laughed one.

"Boom! boom! Crack, crack, boom!"

The hymn was broken off in the middle. The sound of guns was nearer
than Bob had ever heard it before. The enemy had evidently decided
upon a surprise attack.

A horrible screech rent the air, and, looking up, Bob saw an explosion.
It was as though a bouquet of fire were falling on them; and then he
heard noises such as he had never heard before. It was the groans of
the wounded; the cries of men pierced by arrows of fire; the moaning of
brave fellows torn and mutilated for life.

The British guns answered the fire of the enemy, while all around
quick, decisive commands were given.

For some hours after this Bob had only a vague remembrance of what took
place. He knew that the position they now occupied had been captured
from the enemy, who had receded only with the idea of endeavouring to
take it again. Evidently they had kept the secret of their plans well,
for from all the reports given on the previous night there had been no
likelihood of an early attack. But for the Flying Corps they would
have been utterly surprised, and even as it was their preparations had
to be hurriedly made.

"Boom! boom!" bellowed forth the big guns.

"Crack! crack!" said the voices of a thousand rifles.

Bob's remembrance was that he was calmly fulfilling the orders that had
been given to him, and that he was strangely oblivious of danger.

Event after event seemed to follow each other, like so many pictures in
a cinema performance.

He remembered his men in their trenches coolly firing, while shot and
shell fell thick around them.

Later, they moved forward, and took cover under some raised ground,
where they lay silently and warily watching.

He was watching too. In his eagerness he had risen to his feet, and
thus exposed himself to the sight of the enemy. The ground was torn up
at his feet, and he felt something burning hot graze his arm, as if
some one had touched him with a burning knife.

But he was unhurt! He knew that a bullet had only touched his arm. An
inch to the right, and it would have missed him altogether; two inches
to the left, and his arm would have been shattered; a foot to the left,
and he would, in all probability, have been killed.

He saw a body of men in German uniform moving nearer to them. It was a
great mass of soldiers, who came on in great blocks of sixty or eighty,
four deep. The British wai