f their
parties, while here, in mud and rain, weary and drenched to the skin,
young Canadians were waiting to go through the valley of the shadow of
death in order that Canada might live.

CHAPTER XXXIV. (p. 307)

THE CROSSING OF THE CANAL DU NORD.

_September 27th, 1918._

When I got to the sunken road above Inchy I found that No. 1 Company
of the Machine-Gun Battalion had a little sandbag house there, and
were waiting for the attack. I went in and the young officers and men
made me at home at once. I divested myself of my pack, coat and steel
helmet, and determined to settle down for the night. Suddenly a shell
burst in the road, and I went out to see if anyone was hit. Two or
three men were wounded but not severely. We got them in and the young
O.C. of the company bound up their wounds and sent them off. There was
a row of these sandbag-huts against the bank, and at one end of them
was the entrance to a dugout in which the 1st Battalion and the
General of the 1st Brigade had made their headquarters. I went down
the steep steps into a long dark passage, lit here and there by the
light which came from the rooms on either side. The whole place was
crowded with men and the atmosphere was more than usually thick. I
made my way down to the end where there was a pump which had been put
there by the Germans. Here the men were filling their water-bottles,
and I got a fresh supply for mine. Not far from the pump a few steps
led down into a room where I found the C.O. and a number of the
officers of the 1st Battalion. It was about two a.m., and they were
having a breakfast of tea and bacon and invited me to join them. After
the meal was finished, the Colonel, who was lying on a rough bed, said
to me, "Sit down, Canon, and give us some of your nature poems to take
our minds off this beastly business." It was very seldom that I was
invited to recite my own poems, so such an opportunity could not be
lost. I sat down on the steps and repeated a poem which I wrote among
the Laurentian mountains, in the happy days before we ever thought of
war. It is called, "The Unnamed Lake."

"It sleeps among the thousand hills
Where no man ever trod,
And only nature's music fills
The silences of God.

Great mountains tower above its shore, (p. 308)
Green rushes fringe its brim,
And o'er its breast for evermore
The wanton breezes