needful. They're on the
Pylones road, beyond the Boyau-Neuf."

The four alarming objects get under way, cloud-shape, in the trench
that unwinds itself sinuously before them like a blind alley, unsafe,
unlighted, and unpaved. It is uninhabited, too, in this part, being a
gangway between the second lines and the first lines.

In the dusty twilight two Moroccans meet the fire-questing cooks. One
has the skin of a black boot and the other of a yellow shoe. Hope
gleams in the depths of the cooks' hearts.

"Matches, boys?"

"Napoo," replies the black one, and his smile reveals his long
crockery-like teeth in his cigar-colored mouth of moroccan leather.

In his turn the yellow one advances and asks, "Tobacco? A bit of
tobacco?" And he holds out his greenish sleeve and his great hard paw,
in which the cracks are full of brown dirt, and the nails purplish.

Pepin growls, rummages in his clothes, and pulls out a pinch of
tobacco, mixed with dust, which he hands to the sharpshooter.

A little farther they meet a sentry who is half asleep--in the middle
of the evening--on a heap of loose earth. The drowsy soldier says,
"It's to the right, and then again to the right, and then straight
forward. Don't go wrong about it."

They march--for a long time. "We must have come a long way," says
Volpatte, after half an hour of fruitless paces and encloistered
loneliness.

"I say, we're going downhill a hell of a lot, don't you think?" asks
Blaire.

"Don't worry, old duffer," scoffs Pepin, "but if you've got cold feet
you can leave us to it."

Still we tramp on in the falling night. The ever-empty trench--a desert
of terrible length--has taken a shabby and singular appearance. The
parapets are in ruins; earthslides have made the ground undulate in
hillocks.

An indefinite uneasiness lays hold of the four huge fire-hunters, and
increases as night overwhelms them in this monstrous road.

Pepin, who is leading just now, stands fast and holds up his hand as a
signal to halt. "Footsteps," they say in a sobered tone.

Then, and in the heart of them, they are afraid. It was a mistake for
them all to leave their shelter for so long. They are to blame. And one
never knows.

"Get in there, quick, quick!" says Pepin, pointing to a right-angled
cranny on the ground level.

By the test of a hand, the rectangular shadow is proved to be the entry
to a funk-hole. They crawl in singly; and the last one, impatient,
pushes the others; they