the British soldiers with some
irrelevance as he took aim and fired. And then he remembered-he says
he cannot think why or wherefore--a queer vegetarian restaurant in
London where he had once or twice eaten eccentric dishes of cutlets
made of lentils and nuts that pretended to be steak. On all the plates
in this restaurant there was printed a figure of St. George in blue,
with the motto, _Adsit Anglis Sanctus Geogius_--May St. George be a
present help to the English. This soldier happened to know Latin and
other useless things, and now, as he fired at his man in the grey
advancing mass--300 yards away--he uttered the pious vegetarian
motto. He went on firing to the end, and at last Bill on his right had
to clout him cheerfully over the head to make him stop, pointing out
as he did so that the King's ammunition cost money and was not lightly
to be wasted in drilling funny patterns into dead Germans.

For as the Latin scholar uttered his invocation he felt something
between a shudder and an electric shock pass through his body. The
roar of the battle died down in his ears to a gentle murmur; instead
of it, he says, he heard a great voice and a shout louder than a
thunder-peal crying, "Array, array, array!"

His heart grew hot as a burning coal, it grew cold as ice within him,
as it seemed to him that a tumult of voices answered to his summons.
He heard, or seemed to hear, thousands shouting: "St. George! St.
George!"

"Ha! messire; ha! sweet Saint, grant us good deliverance!"

"St. George for merry England!"

"Harow! Harow! Monseigneur St. George, succour us."

"Ha! St. George! Ha! St. George! a long bow and a strong bow."

"Heaven's Knight, aid us!"

And as the soldier heard these voices he saw before him, beyond the
trench, a long line of shapes, with a shining about them. They were
like men who drew the bow, and with another shout their cloud of
arrows flew singing and tingling through the air towards the German
hosts.

The other men in the trench were firing all the while. They had no
hope; but they aimed just as if they had been shooting at Bisley.
Suddenly one of them lifted up his voice in the plainest English,
"Gawd help us!" he bellowed to the man next to him, "but we're
blooming marvels! Look at those grey... gentlemen, look at them! D'ye
see them? They're not going down in dozens, nor in 'undreds; it's
thousands, it is. Look! look! there's a regiment gone while I'm
talking to ye."

"Shut it!" the