e too high for me to climb out. So I took to
walking along it, and it twisted all around, with passages like a maze,
but nowhere a place to climb. At one corner I met a horrible great snake,
helpless down there too. But it went one way and I went the other, till I
came to a little niche with a cover overhead, and a loophole looking
along the waste of scrub. Outside a little sign said, "Machine-gun
emplacement." And there I stood looking out for a sign of help.

Then I heard Captain Kirby's voice, no one could mistake it, and I was
relieved till I understood what he was saying. "Less noise, men! You
couldn't creep up on a dead tree that way. It would hear you coming." The
horrible thing had all his hundred and fifty men there, and in a moment I
began to see them, little glimpses of olive-drab pushing through the
bushes. I heard his voice again: "By squads from the right!" then
corporals' voices, then the rushing of men, then more corporals and more
rushing. All the time, from nowhere that I could see, came a continual
clicking--the absurd creatures were pretending to fire on the trench
where I was standing. I began to get more glimpses of men running stooped
and throwing themselves flat, heard the captain's war-horn, and a little
further away the lieutenant's voice like a bugle.

For this sort of playing soldier I suppose it was really pretty well
done. I knew they were all the time coming nearer, but I couldn't get
anything but glimpses of them. And after a while I knew they were behind
a line of bushes some fifty yards away, where I heard their continuous
clicking; but they showed only an occasional hat. Then I heard the
captain's voice, "Front rank, simulate fix bayonets!" and in a moment,
full of sarcasm: "Don't draw that bayonet! I said _simulate_. Don't you
understand the English language?" The clicking kept up at only half rate,
and I saw a few rifle muzzles; then the rear rank pretended the same;
then I heard the order, "Prepare to charge!" And it was all dead silence.

There was nothing that I could do but peep through my loophole, and think
how silly it all was. I heard a roar from the captain, an outburst of
yells, the crash of the bushes, and--there was the captain coming like a
bull, and a long rank of men rising behind him and rolling on toward me
in a wave. Oh, Frances dear, there is something awful about brute force!
I felt the ground shake, the noise of the shouting seemed to burst my
ears, the faces in