f
the lamp.

The curtain was pulled aside and a man staggered in holding with the
other hand a limp arm twisted in a mud-covered sleeve, from which blood
and mud dripped on to the floor.

"Hello, old chap," said the doctor quietly. A smell of disinfectant
stole through the dugout.

Faint above the incessant throbbing of explosions, the sound of a claxon
horn.

"Ha, gas," said the doctor. "Put on your masks, children." A man went
along the dugout waking those who were asleep and giving out fresh
masks. Someone stood in the doorway blowing a shrill whistle, then there
was again the clamour of a claxon near at hand.

The band of the gas mask was tight about Martin's forehead, biting into
the skin.

He and Randolph sat side by side on the edge of the bunk, looking out
through the crinkled isinglass eyepieces at the men in the dugout, most
of whom had gone to sleep again.

"God, I envy a man who can snore through a gas-mask," said Randolph.

Men's heads had a ghoulish look, strange large eyes and grey oilcloth
flaps instead of faces.

Outside the constant explosions had given place to a series of swishing
whistles, merging together into a sound as of water falling, only less
regular, more sibilant. Occasionally there was the rending burst of a
shell, and at intervals came the swinging detonations of the three guns.
In the dugout, except for two men who snored loudly, raspingly, everyone
was quiet.

Several stretchers with wounded men on them were brought in and laid in
the end of the dugout.

Gradually, as the bombardment continued, men began sliding into the
dugout, crowding together, touching each other for company, speaking in
low voices through their masks.

"A mask, in the name of God, a mask!" a voice shouted, breaking into a
squeal, and an unshaven man, with mud caked in his hair and beard, burst
through the curtain. His eyelids kept up a continual trembling and the
water streamed down both sides of his nose.

"O God," he kept talking in a rasping whisper, "O God, they're all
killed. There were six mules on my waggon and a shell killed them all
and threw me into the ditch. You can't find the road any more. They're
all killed."

An orderly was wiping his face as if it were a child's.

"They're all killed and I lost my mask.... O God, this gas ..."

The doctor, a short man, looking like a gnome in his mask with its
wheezing rubber nosepiece, was walking up and down with short, slow
steps.

Sudde