drop off into unconsciousness, I had the chance of sleeping
till an hour before the dawn.

Sec.6

There is something depressing in being called while it is still
dark, and being obliged to dress by artificial light. As I laced my
boots by the flame of the candle in the dusk before the dawn, I felt
a sensation I used to experience at school, when they lit the
class-room gas in the early twilight of a winter afternoon--a
sensation of the sadness and futility of all things.

I awoke Doe, and could tell, as he sat up, rubbing his eyes and
yawning, that returning memory was filling his mind with speculation
as to what unthinkable things the morning might hold in its womb.
With the feigned gaiety of the day before he flung off his blankets,
and said:

"Well, Roop, it's 'over the top and the best of luck' for us this
morning."

"Strange how quiet everything is," I replied. "The bombardment ought
to have started before this."

"Yes, it's a still and top-hole morning." Saying this, Doe went to
the dug-out window to look at the dawn. The moment that his face
framed itself in the square of the window, dawn, coming in like an
AEgean sunset with a violet light, lit up his half-profile, throwing
into clear relief the familiar features, and dropping a brilliant
spark into each of his wide, contemplative eyes. The effect was a
thing of the stage: it lent him an added wistfulness, and I felt a
pang of pity for him, and a throb of something not lower than love.
He walked back to his bed, whistling, while I completed my
preparations by fixing my revolver to my belt.

"Well, I'm ready," I said. "I must go and look at my braves."

"Don't s'pose I shall see you again, then, before the show," said
Doe, pulling on his boots nonchalantly.

"No. We'll compare notes in the captured trenches this evening."

"Right you are. Cheerioh!"

"Chin-chin."

I went out, reviewing painful possibilities. In the trenches I
found my company "standing-to," armed and ready. Knowing that idle
waiting would mean suspense and agitation, I went about overhauling
ammunition, and instructing my men on the exact objectives and the
work of consolidation. My restlessness brought back vividly that day
when I had suffered from nerves before the Bramhall-Erasmus swimming
race. The same interior hollowness made me chafe at delay and long
to be started--to be busied in the excitement of action--to be
looking back on it all as a thing of the past.

The mor