skins that come from perfect cleanliness and perfect
health. Following the direction of the arrows on signs printed in both
French and Russian, we at last reached the fire-trench, where dim
figures looking strangely mediaeval in their steel helmets, crouched
motionless, peering out along their rifle-barrels into the eerie
darkness of No Man's Land. Here there was a sporadic illumination, for
from the German trenches in front of us lights were rising and
falling. They were very beautiful: slender stems of fire arching
skyward to burst into blossoms of brilliant sparks, which illuminated
the band of shell-pocked soil between the trenches as though it were
day. Occasionally there would be a dozen of these star-shells in the
air at the same time: they reminded me of the Fourth of July fireworks
at Manhattan Beach. In the fire-trenches there is no talking save in
whispers, but every now and then the almost uncanny silence would be
punctuated by the sharp crack of a rifle, the _tut-tut-tut_ of a
mitrailleuse, or, from somewhere in the distance, the angry bark of a
field-gun.

There was a whispered conversation between the officer in command of
the trench and my guide. The latter turned to me.

"We have driven a sap to within thirty metres of the enemy," he said,
"and have established a listening-post out there. Would you care to
go out to it?"

I would, and said so.

"No talking, then, if you please," he warned me, "and as little noise
as possible."

This time the _boyau_ was very narrow, and writhed between its earthen
walls like a dying snake. We advanced on tiptoe, as cautiously as
though stalking big game--as, indeed, we were. Ten minutes of this
slow and tortuous progress brought us to the _poste d'ecoute_. In a
space the size of a hall bedroom half a score of men stood in
attitudes of strained expectancy, staring into the blackness through
the loopholes in their steel shields. There being no loophole vacant,
I took a chance and, standing on the firing step, raised my head above
the level of the parapet and made a hurried survey of the few yards of
No Man's Land which separated us from the enemy--a space so narrow
that I could have thrown a stone across, yet more impassable than the
deepest chasm. I was rewarded for the risk by getting a glimpse of a
dim maze of wire entanglements, and, just beyond, a darker bulk which
I knew for the German trench. And I knew that from that trench sharp
eyes were peering out into