old the story of that night in a quiet, thoughtful way, with phrases
of almost biblical beauty in their simple truth, and the soul of the
man, the spirit of the whole army in which he was a private soldier, was
revealed when he flashed out a sentence with his one note of fire, "But
the enemy lost more than we did, sir, that night!"

We wandered away again into the darkness, with the din of the
bombardment all about us. There was not a square yard of ground unplowed
by shells and we did not nourish any false illusions as to finding a
safe spot for a bivouac.

There was no spot within the ramparts of Ypres where a man might say "No
shells will fall here." But one place we found where there seemed some
reasonable odds of safety. There also, if sleep assailed us, we might
curl up in an abandoned dugout and hope that it would not be "crumped"
before the dawn. There were several of these shelters there, but,
peering into them by the light of a match, I shuddered at the idea of
lying in one of them. They had been long out of use and there was a foul
look about the damp bedding and rugs which had been left to rot there.
They were inhabited already by half-wild cats--the abandoned cats of
Ypres, which hunted mice through the ruins of their old houses--and
they spat at me and glared with green-eyed fear as I thrust a match into
their lairs.

There were two kitchen chairs, with a deal table on which we put our
cake and Cointreau, and here, through half a night, my friend and I
sat watching and listening to that weird scene upon which the old moon
looked down; and, as two men will at such a time, we talked over all the
problems of life and death and the meaning of man's heritage.

Another sentry challenged us--all his nerves jangled at our apparition.
He was a young fellow, one of "Kitchener's crowd," and told us frankly
that he had the "jimjams" in this solitude of Ypres and "saw Germans"
every time a rat jumped. He lingered near us--"for company.

It was becoming chilly. The dew made our clothes damp. Cake and sweet
liquor were poor provisions for the night, and the thought of hot
tea was infinitely seductive. Perhaps somewhere one might find a few
soldiers round a kettle in some friendly dugout. We groped our way
along, holding our breath at times as a shell came sweeping overhead or
burst with a sputter of steel against the ramparts. It was profoundly
dark, so that only the glowworms glittered like jewels on black velvet.