THE ADVANCED TRENCHES

'_Near Blank, on the Dash-Dot front, a section of advanced trench
changed hands several times, finally remaining in our possession._'

For perhaps the twentieth time in half an hour the look-out man in the
advanced trench raised his head cautiously over the parapet and peered
out into the darkness. A drizzling rain made it almost impossible to
see beyond a few yards ahead, but then the German trench was not more
than fifty yards off and the space between was criss-crossed and
interlaced and a-bristle with the tangle of barb-wire defences erected
by both sides. For the twentieth time the look-out peered and twisted
his head sideways to listen, and for the twentieth time he was just
lowering his head beneath the sheltering parapet when he stopped and
stiffened into rigidity. There was no sound apart from the sharp
cracks of the rifles near at hand and running diminuendo along the
trenches into a rising and falling stutter of reports, the frequent
whine and whistle of the more distant bullets, and the quick hiss and
'zipp' of the nearer ones, all sounds so constant and normal that the
look-out paid no heed to them, put them, as it were, out of the focus
of his hearing, and strained to catch the fainter but far more
significant sound of a footstep squelching in the mud, the 'snip' of a
wire-cutter at work, the low 'tang' of a jarred wire.

A few hundred yards down the line, a dazzling light sprang out, hung
suspended, and slowly floated down, glowing nebulous in the misty rain,
and throwing a soft radiance and dusky shadows and gleaming lines of
silver along the parapets and wire entanglements.

Intent, the look-out stared to his front for a moment, flung muzzle
over the parapet and butt to shoulder, and snapped a quick shot at one
of the darker blotches that lay prone beyond the outer tangles of wire.
The blotch jerked and sprawled, and the look-out shouted, slipped out
the catch of his magazine cut-off, and pumped out the rounds as fast as
fingers could work bolt and trigger, the stabbing flashes of the
discharge lighting with sharp vivid glares his tense features, set
teeth, and scowling eyes. There was a pause and stillness for the
space of a couple of quick-drawn breaths, and then--pandemonium!

The forward trench flamed and blazed with spouts of rifle-fire, its
slightly curved length clearly defined from end to end by the spitting
flashes. Verey lights and magnesium flares turned the