ore.
I fired it at a German trench, and when my work was o'er
The sergeant down the barrel glanced, and looked at me and said,
"Your hipe is dirty, sloppy Jim; an extra hour's parade!"

The hour was midnight. Over me and about me was the wonderful French
summer night; the darkness, blue and transparent, splashed with
star-shells, hung around me and gathered itself into a dark streak on
the floor of the trench beneath the banquette on which I stood. Away
on my right were the Hills of Lorette, Souchez, and the Labyrinth
where big guns eternally spoke, and where the searchlights now touched
the heights with long tremulous white arms. To my left the star-shells
rose and fell in brilliant riot above the battle-line that (p. 293)
disfigured the green meadows between my trench and Ypres, and out on
my front a thousand yards away were the German trenches with the dead
wasting to clay amid the poppy-flowers in the spaces between. The
dug-out, in which my mates rested and dreamt, lay silent in the dun
shadows of the parados.

Suddenly a candle was lit inside the door, and I could see our
corporal throw aside the overcoat that served as blanket and place the
tip of a cigarette against the spluttering flame. Bill slept beside
the corporal's bed, his head on a bully beef tin, and one naked arm,
sunned and soiled to a khaki tint, lying slack along the earthen
floor. The corporal came out puffing little curls of smoke into the
night air.

"Quiet?" he asked.

"Dull enough, here," I answered. "But there's no peace up by Souchez."

"So I can hear," he answered, flicking the ash from his cigarette and
gazing towards the hills where the artillery duel was raging. "Have
the working parties come up yet?" he asked.

"Not yet," I answered, "but I think I hear men coming now."

They came along the trench, about two hundred strong, engineers (p. 294)
and infantry, men carrying rifles, spades, coils of barbed wire,
wooden supports, &c. They were going out digging on a new sap and
putting up fresh wire entanglements. This work, when finished, would
bring our fire trench three hundred yards nearer the enemy. Needless
to say, the Germans were engaged on similar work, and they were
digging out towards our lines.

The working party came to a halt; and one of them sat down on the
banquette at my feet, asked for a match and lit a cigarette.

"You're in the village at the rear?" I said.

"We're reserves there," he answered