ing happened,
and I felt light-hearted as though miles from danger--all fear of death
was taken away. What did it matter if we were killed?--it was a
strange sense of security in a rather tight place.

After a short while our bombardment ceased. We learned afterward that
word was sent back to the artillery that we were still out. As the
boche fire also stopped soon afterward, we were able to scurry back and
surprise our friends with our safe appearance.

After this experience Ray Wilson and I were closer than brothers--than
twin brothers. It was only a common danger shared, such an ordinary
thing in trench life, but there was something that was not on the
surface, and though I was his officer, our friendship knew no barrier.
I went mad for a while when his body was found--mutilated--after he had
been missing three days. Don't talk of "not hating" to a man whose
friend has been foully murdered! What if he had been yours?

A very different man was Dan Macarthy, a typical outbacker. All the
schooling he ever got was from an itinerant teacher who would stay for
a week at the house, correct and set tasks, returning three months
later for another week. This system was adopted by the government for
the sparsely settled districts not able to support a teacher, as a
means of assisting the parents in teaching their children themselves.
But Dan's parents could neither read nor write, and what healthy
youngster, with "all out-of-doors" around him, would study by himself.
Dan read with difficulty and wrote with greater, but I have met few
better-educated men. His eyesight was marvellous, and I don't think
that he ever forgot an incident, however slight. After a route march
our scouts have to write down everything they saw, not omitting the
very smallest detail. For example, if we pass through a village they
have to give an estimate by examining the stores, how many troops it
could support, and so on. No other list was ever as large as Dan's.
He saw and remembered everything. He had received his training as a
child looking for horses in a paddock so large that if you did not know
where to look you might search for a week. Out there in the country of
the black-tracker powers of observation are abnormally developed--lives
depend on it, as when in a drought the watercourses dry up, and only
the signs written on the ground indicate to him who can read them where
the life-saving fluid may be found. Dan was a wonderful sco