d," said the sergeant. "I
shan't be long."

When he had gone, the signaler rose and closed the door; it was cold
enough, as he very sensibly argued, and his being able to hear the
fighting better would do nothing to affect its issue. Just after came
another call on his instrument, and the repair party told him they had
crossed the neutral ground, had one man wounded in the arm, that he was
going on with them, and they were still following up the wire. The
message ceased, and the telephonist, leaning his elbows on the table
and his chin on his hands, was almost asleep before he realized it. He
wakened with a jerk, lit another cigarette, and stamped up and down the
room trying to warm his numbed feet.

First one orderly and then another brought in messages to be sent to
the other trenches, and the signaler held them a minute and gathered
some more particulars as to how the fight was progressing up there. The
particulars were not encouraging. We must have lost a lot of men, since
the whole place was clotted up with casualties that kept coming in
quicker than the stretcher-bearers could move them. The rifle-fire was
hot, the bombing was still hotter, and the shelling was perhaps the
hottest and most horrible of all. Of the last the signaler hardly
required an account; the growling thumps of heavy shells exploding,
kept sending little shivers down the cellar walls, the shiver being,
oddly enough, more emphatic when the wail of the falling shell ended in
a muffled thump that proclaimed the missile "blind" or "a dud." Another
hurried messenger plunged down the steps with a note written by the
adjutant to say the colonel was severely wounded and had sent for the
second in command to take over. Ten more dragging minutes passed, and
now the separate little shivers and thrills that shook the cellar walls
had merged and run together. The rolling crash of the falling shells
and the bursting of bombs came close and fast one upon another, and at
intervals the terrific detonation of an aerial torpedo dwarfed for the
moment all the other sounds.

By now the noise was so great that even the sleepers began to stir, and
one or two of them to wake. One sat up and asked the telephonist,
sitting idle over his instrument, what was happening. He was told
briefly, and told also that the line was "disc." He expressed
considerable annoyance at this, grumbling that he knew what it
meant--more trips in the mud and under fire to take the messages