few hours
more for my concrete to dry."

"Go ahead, Captain." The Colonel told Claude and David to bring
their men up to the communication before light, and hold them
ready. "Give Owens' cement a chance, but don't let the enemy put
over any surprise on you."

The shelling began again at daybreak; it was hardest on the rear
trenches and the three-mile area behind. Evidently the enemy felt
sure of what he had in Moltke trench; he wanted to cut off
supplies and possible reinforcements. The Missouri battalion did
not come up that day, but before noon a runner arrived from their
Colonel, with information that they were hiding in the wood. Five
Boche planes had been circling over the wood since dawn,
signalling to the enemy Headquarters back on Dauphin Ridge; the
Missourians were sure they had avoided detection by lying close
in the under-brush. They would come up in the night. Their
linemen were following the runner, and Colonel Scott would be in
telephone communication with them in half an hour.

When B Company moved into the Boar's Head at one o'clock in the
afternoon, they could truthfully say that the prevailing smell
was now that of quick-lime. The parapet was evenly built up, the
firing step had been partly restored, and in the Snout there were
good emplacements for the machine guns. Certain unpleasant
reminders were still to be found if one looked for them. In the
Snout a large fat boot stuck stiffly from the side of the trench.
Captain Ovens explained that the ground sounded hollow in there,
and the boot probably led back into a dugout where a lot of Hun
bodies were entombed together. As he was pressed for time, he had
thought best not to look for trouble. In one of the curves of the
loop, just at the top of the earth wall, under the sand bags, a
dark hand reached out; the five fingers, well apart, looked like
the swollen roots of some noxious weed. Hicks declared that this
object was disgusting, and during the afternoon he made Nifty
Jones and Oscar scrape down some earth and make a hump over the
paw. But there was shelling in the night, and the earth fell
away.

"Look," said Jones when he wakened his Sergeant. "The first thing
I seen when daylight come was his old fingers, wigglin' in the
breeze. He wants air, Heinie does; he won't stay covered."

Hicks got up and re-buried the hand himself, but when he came
around with Claude on inspection, before breakfast, there were
the same five fingers sticking out