spent a couple or
hours or so flashing round the wires in search of us. And we go to sleep
until to-morrow midday, when the day's play begins again.

When we had been thus "rested" for some days we went and took over a
nice new line, with lots of funny bits in it. The front line had three
bits.

_Left sector_--Mine (exploded; possibly held by Bosch on far side).

_Central sector_--Mine? (unexploded; not held by Bosch anywhere).

_Right sector_--Mine (exploded; possibly held by Bosch on far side).

Our position seemed a little problematical. The left and right we
satisfied ourselves about at once, but the centre was in a class by
itself. We demanded an investigator, somebody with wide mine-sweeping
experience preferred.

About 2 A.M. on our first day in, a figure loomed up through a
snow-storm from the back of the central trench and asked forlornly if
there might be any mines hereabouts. We admitted there might be, or
again there might not. He questioned us precisely where it was
suspected, and we told him "underneath." He scratched his head and
announced that he was sent to look for it. His qualifications consisted
apparently in his having coal-mined. But he seemed confident of
detecting the quicker combustion sort, until he asked for necessary
impedimenta. It seems that no good collier can detect an H.E. or any
sort of mine without a pail of water, and a hole about 2,000 feet deep,
and a pulley, and a rope ladder and a bratting-slat.

It's true we had some good holes in parts of the trench, where you
probably go down 2,000 feet if you step off the footboards, and the rest
of the stuff we might have contrived to improvise. But for the moment we
had somehow run clean out of bratting-slats.

So we had to return the poor fellow with a request that all experts
should be completed with bratting-slats before being sent to the front
line. This request only produced the senseless interrogation, "What _is_
a bratting-slat?" to which we have not yet bothered to reply. In the
meantime if we are really sitting on a mine it seems quite a tame one.
It hasn't as much as barked yet.

Just in our bit we aren't very well off for dug-outs; it isn't really
what you'd call a representative sector from any point of view. But
during a blizzard the other night a messenger who had mislaid himself
took us for a serious trench. He made his way along, looking to right
and left for some seat of authority until he came to a hole in the
p