men absolutely devoid of fear,
'Smith and Brown and--Jones' (mentioning a notorious and most-admired
fire-eating brigadier, a little man in whom bursting shells produced
every symptom of intoxication except inability to get about). Then he
added, 'I'm not sure about Jones.'

It is interesting to notice the different ways in which nervousness
shows. I remember one man in whom was never observed the slightest
emotion amid the terriblest happenings, till one day some one noticed
that whenever he went forward he turned up his jacket-collar, as if to
shelter from that fiery rain. Myself, I hate the beginning of conflict,
and am eager to push well into it and under the shell-barrage. As there
is said to be a cool core in the heart of flame, so there is a certain
cool centre for the spirit where horror is radiating out to a wide
circumference. In the depths one must surrender one's efforts and trust
to elemental powers and agonies, but in the shallows all the calls are
on the 'transitory being' whose flesh and blood are pitted against
machinery. How can the nerves and trembling thought bear up? Yet they
have borne up, even in men quick with sense and imagination. I felt
restless as we lay on the flat desert listening to the bullets singing
by or to a nosecap's leisured search for a victim, dipping and twisting
to left and right till at last it thudded down. If one must lie still,
then company gives a feeling of security. Fate may have, doubtless has,
a special down on you, but even Fate is unlikely to blow you to bits if
the act involves blowing to bits several of her more favoured sons. So
I remember with amusement my vague vexation with the curiosity that
always made my companion get up and stroll about when under fire,
peering round. Though he went scarcely five yards, it seemed like
desertion.

We watched our guns run up to the 'Pimple,' a recently built-up mound
slightly ahead of us, lately used as a Turkish O. Pip, now accruing to
us for the same purpose. The infantry assumed that these wagons and
limbers moving a hundred yards to our right would draw all the enemy's
fire, in which case we, helpless on the flat, would be shelled out of
this existence. But this did not happen; why, I cannot guess, unless I
have correctly traced the reason for that bad observation so marked in
the Turkish gunning all through this day. We were in the slightest
possible depression, with a scarcely perceptible lift on our left and a
steady