w
their own limitations--neither Jim nor Wally ever deluded themselves
with the idea that they knew as much as their hard-bitten
non-commissioned officers. But they learned their men by heart,
knowing each one's nickname and something of his private affairs;
losing no opportunity of talking to them and gaining their confidence,
and sizing them up, as they talked, just as in old days, as captains
of the team, they had learned to size up boys at football. "If I've
got to go over the top I want to know what Joe Wilkins and Tiny Judd
are doing behind me," said Jim.

They had hoped for leave before the spring offensive, but it was
impossible: the battalion was too shorthanded, and the enemy was
endeavouring to be the four-times-armed man who "gets his fist in
fust." In that early fighting it became necessary to deal with a nest
of machine-guns that had got the range of their trenches to a nicety.
Shells had failed to find them, and the list of casualties to their
discredit mounted daily higher. Jim got the chance. He shook hands
with Wally--a vision of miserable disappointment--in the small hours
of a starlit night, and led a picked body of his men out of the front
trench: making a long _detour_ and finally working nearer and nearer
to the spot he had studied through his periscope for hours during the
day. Then he planted his men in a shell-hole, and wriggled forward
alone.

The men lay waiting, inwardly chafing at being left. Presently their
officer came crawling back to them.

"We've got 'em cold," he whispered. "Come along--and don't fire a
shot."

It was long after daylight before the German guards in the main
trenches suspected anything wrong with that particular nest of
machine-guns, and marvelled at its silence. For there was no one left
to tell them anything--of the fierce, silent onslaught from the rear;
of men who dropped as it were from the clouds and fought with clubbed
rifles, led by a boy who seemed in the starlight as tall as a young
pine-tree. The gun-crews were sleeping, and most of them never woke
again: the guards, drowsy in the quiet stillness, heard nothing until
that swift, wordless avalanche was upon them.

In the British trench there was impatience and anxiety. The men
waiting to go forward, if necessary, to support the raiders, crouched
at the fire-step, muttering. Wally, sick with suspense, peered
forward beside the Colonel, who had come in person to see the result
of the raid.