cover.

When the shooting had ceased and the casualties had been cleared out on
their way to the dressing station, the Asterisks recharged their
rifle-magazines and spent a good hour discussing the incident, those
men who had been beside the casualties finding themselves and their
narratives of how it happened in great demand.

And one of the casualties, having insisted, when his slight wound was
dressed, on returning to the trench, had to deliver a series of
lecturettes on what it felt like, what the Medical said, how the other
fellows were, how the dressing station was worked, and similar
subjects, with pantomimic illustrations of how he was holding his rifle
when the bullet came through the loophole, and how he was still fully
capable of continuing to hold it.

A heavy shower dispersed the audiences, those of the men who were free
to do so returning to muddy and leaky dug-outs, and the remainder
taking up their positions at the parapet. There was as much chance of
these latter standing on their heads as there was of their going to
sleep, but the officers made so many visiting rounds to be certain of
their sentries' wakefulness, and spent so long on each round and on the
fascinating peeps over into 'the neutral ground,' that the end of one
round was hardly completed before it was time to begin the next.

Occasionally the Germans sent up a flare, and every man and officer of
the K.O.A. who was awake stared out through the loopholes in
expectation of they knew not what. They also fired off a good many
'pistol lights,' and it was nearly 4 A.M. before the Germans ventured
to send out their working-party over the parapet. Once over, they
followed the usual routine, throwing themselves flat in the mud and
rank grass when a light flared up and remaining motionless until it
died out, springing to silent and nervous activity the instant darkness
fell, working mostly by sense of touch, and keeping one eye always on
the British parapet for the first hint of a soaring light.

The 'neutral ground' between the trenches was fairly thickly scattered
over with dead, the majority of them German, and it was easy enough for
an extra score or so of men, lying prone and motionless as the dead
themselves, to be overlooked in the shifting light. The work was
proceeding satisfactorily and was almost completed when a mischance led
to the exposure of the party.

One of the workers was in the very act of crawling over the parapet
whe