w. There is a sudden halt and I am thrown on
Poterloo. Up higher we hear half-angry reproaches--"What the devil,
will you get on? We shall get broken up!"

"I can't get my trotters unstuck!" replies a pitiful voice.

The engulfed one gets clear at last, and we have to run to overtake the
rest of the company. We begin to pant and complain, and bluster against
those who are leading. Our feet go down haphazard; we stumble and hold
ourselves up by the wails, so that our hands are plastered with mud.
The march becomes a stampede, full of the noise of metal things and of
oaths.

In redoubled rain there is a second halt; some one has fallen, and the
hubbub is general. He picks himself up and we are off again. I exert
myself to follow Poterloo's helmet closely that gleams feebly in the
night before my eyes, and I shout from time to time, "All
right?"--"Yes, yes, all right," he replies, puffing and blowing, and
his voice always singsong and resonant.

Our knapsacks, tossed in this rolling race under the assault of the
elements, drag and hurt our shoulders.

The trench is blocked by a recent landslide, and we plunge unto it. We
have to tear our feet out of the soft and clinging earth, lifting them
high at each step. Then, when this crossing is laboriously
accomplished, we topple down again into the slippery stream, in the
bottom of which are two narrow ruts, boot-worn, which hold one's foot
like a vice, and there are pools into which it goes with a great
splash. In one place we must stoop very low to pass under a heavy and
glutinous bridge that crosses the trench, and we only get through with
difficulty. It obliges us to kneel in the mud, to flatten ourselves on
the ground, and to crawl on all fours for a few paces. A little farther
there are evolutions to perform as we grasp a post that the sinking of
the ground has set aslope across the middle of the fairway.

We come to a trench-crossing. "Allons, forward! Look out for
yourselves, boys!" says the adjutant, who has flattened himself in a
corner to let us pass and to speak to us. "This is a bad spot."

"We're done up," shouts a voice so hoarse that I cannot identify the
speaker.

"Damn! I've enough of it, I'm stopping here," groans another, at the
end of his wind and his muscle.

"What do you want me to do?" replies the adjutant, "No fault of mine,
eh? Allons, get a move on, it's a bad spot--it was shelled at the last
relief!"

We go on through the tempest of wind a