nemy had located it as an important spot, for shell after shell
dropped near by, while the men who had so far recovered their senses as
to be able to get away, crawled into the shell hole.

'Come in here, you madman!' one man said. 'You can't get him out, and
you'll only get killed.'

But Paul Edgecumbe kept on digging, heedless of flying bullets,
heedless of death.

'He can't get him out,' said a soldier to me in a dazed sort of way;
'he's buried, that's what he is.'

'Who is it?' I asked.

'Captain Springfield,' replied the man. 'Come in here,' he shouted to
Edgecumbe, 'that fellow ain't worth it!'

Scarcely realizing what I was doing, and so weak that I could hardly
walk, I crawled nearer to my friend.

'You have a hopeless task there,' I remember saying. 'Leave it, and
get into the hole there.'

'Is that you, Luscombe? I shall save him, I am sure I shall. I was
buried once myself, so I know what it means. There, I have got him!'
He threw down the tool with which he was digging, and with his hands
pulled away the stones and earth which lay over the body.

I don't quite recollect what took place after that. I have a confused
remembrance of lying in the shell hole, while the tornado went on. I
seemed to see, as in a dream, batches of soldiers pass by me in the
near distance; some of them Germans, while others were our own men.
Everything was confused, unreal. Even now I could not swear to what
took place,--what I thought I saw and heard may not be in fact a
reality at all, but only phantoms of the mind. Flesh and blood, and
nerves and brain were utterly exhausted, and although I was not
wounded, I was more dead than alive.

I have an indistinct remembrance of a dark night, and of being led over
ground seamed with deep furrows, and made hideous with dead bodies. I
had a fancy, too, that the sky was lit up with star shells, and that
there was a continuous booming of guns. But this may have been the
result of a disordered imagination.

When I came to consciousness, I was at a clearing-station, suffering, I
was told, from shell shock.

'You're not a bad case,' said the M.O. to me, with a laugh, 'but
evidently you've had a rough time. From what I can hear, too, you had
a very great time.'

'A great time!' I said. 'I scarcely remember anything.'

'Some of your men do, anyhow. Yes, the second line was taken, and the
village with it. Not that any village is left,' he added with a laugh.
'I he