from the trenches to have a real meal, and the English officer who had
taken me out.

Outside the door stood the major's Congo servant, a black boy who
never leaves him, following with dog-like fidelity into the trenches
and sleeping outside his door when the major is in billet. He had
picked him up in the Congo years before during his active service
there.

The meal went on. The frying-pan was passed. The food was good and the
talk was better. It was indiscriminately rapid French and English.
When it was English I replied. When it was French I ate.

The hostess presented me with a shrapnel case which had arrived that
day on the doorstep.

"If you are collecting trophies," said the major, "I shall get you a
German sentry this evening. How would you like that?"

There was a reckless twinkle in the major's eye. It developed that he
had captured several sentries and liked playing the game.

But I did not know the man. So I said: "Certainly, it would be most
interesting."

Whereupon he rose. It took all the combined effort of the dinner party
to induce him to sit down and continue his meal. He was vastly
disappointed. He was a big man with a humorous mouth. The idea of
bringing me a German sentry to take home as a trophy appealed to him.

The meal went on. No one seemed to consider the circumstances
extraordinary. Now and then I remembered the story of the street
fighting a few nights before. I had an idea that these people would
keep on eating and talking English politics quite calmly in the event
of a German charge. I wondered if I could live up to my reputation for
courage in such a crisis.

CHAPTER XXIV

FLIGHT

The first part of the meal over, the hostess picked up a nut and threw
it deftly at a door leading into the lean-to-kitchen.

"Our table bell," she explained to me. And, true enough, a moment
later the orderly appeared and carried out the plates.

Then we had dessert, which was fruit and candy, and coffee.

And all the time the guns were firing, and every opening of the door
into the corridor brought a gale of wind into the room.

Suddenly it struck me that hardly a foot of the plaster interior of
that room was whole. The ceiling was riddled. So were the walls.

"Shrapnel," said the major, following my gaze. "It gets worse every
day."

"I think the ceiling is going to fall," said one of the hostesses.

True enough, there was a great bulge in the centre. But it held for
that night.