mood for amusement. So we rode in silence
down the hill, while the flames of Ypres gleamed and flickered in the
distance.

Of a sudden, however, the Captain burst into a roar of laughter.

"It was worth it," he panted as he rolled in his saddle, "to see the
poor blighters scatter. Lord! but it was lovely to hear that Major
curse."

X

THE LIAR

For an hour and a half we had been crumped and whizz-banged and
trench-mortared as never before, but it was not until the shelling
slackened that one could really see the damage done. The sudden
explosions of whizz-bangs, the increasing whine and fearful bursts of
crumps, and, worst of all, the black trench-mortar bombs that came
hurtling and twisting down from the skies, kept the nerves at a pitch
which allowed of no clear vision of the smashed trench and the wounded
men.

However, as the intervals between the explosions grew longer and longer
the men gradually pulled themselves together and began to look round.
The havoc was appalling. Where the telephone dug-out had been was now a
huge hole--a mortar bomb had landed there, and had blown the telephone
orderly almost on to the German wire, fifty yards away; great gaps, on
which the German machine guns played at intervals, were made all along
our parapet; the casualties were being sorted out as well as
possible--the dead to be carried into an old support trench, and there
to await burial, the wounded to be hurried down to the overcrowded
dressing station as quickly as the bearers could get the stretchers
away; the unhurt--scarcely half the company--were, for the most part,
still gazing up into the sky in the expectation of that twisting, all
too familiar, black bomb that has such a terrific devastating power.
Gradually quiet came again, and the men set about their interrupted
business--their sleep to be snatched, their work to be finished before
the long night with its monotonous watching and digging began.

With the Sergeant-major I went down the trench to discuss repairs, for
much must be done as soon as night fell. Then, leaving him to make out a
complete list of the casualties, I returned to my dug-out to share the
rations of rum with Bennett, the only subaltern who remained in the
company.

"Where's the rum?" I asked. "Being shelled makes one thirsty."

He handed me a cup, at the bottom of which a very little rum was to be
seen. "I divided it as well as I could," he said rather apologetically.

"If you