e without
socks squelched at every step with a loud, sucking noise--"like a German
drinking soup," said an officer who preceded me.

"Why grouse?" he said, presently. "It's better than Brighton!"

It was a queer experience, this paddling through the long communication
trenches, which wound in and out like the Hampton Court maze toward the
front line, and the mine craters which made a salient to our right, by
a place called the "Tambour." Shells came whining overhead and somewhere
behind us iron doors were slamming in the sky, with metallic bangs, as
though opening and shutting in a tempest. The sharp crack of rifle-shots
showed that the snipers were busy on both sides, and once I stood in a
deep pool, with the water up to my knees, listening to what sounded like
the tap-tap-tap of invisible blacksmiths playing a tattoo on an anvil.

It was one of our machine-guns at work a few yards away from my head,
which I ducked below the trench parapet. Splodge! went the officer
in front of me, with a yell of dismay. The water was well above his
top-boots. Splosh! went another man ahead, recovering from a side-slip
in the oozy mud and clinging desperately to some bunches of yarrow
growing up the side of the trench. Squelch! went a young gentleman whose
puttees and breeches had lost their glory and were but swabs about his
elegant legs.

"Clever fellows!" said the officer, as two of us climbed on to the
fire-stand of the trench in order to avoid a specially deep water-hole,
and with ducked heads and bodies bent double (the Germans were only two
hundred yards on the other side of the parapet) walked on dry earth for
at least ten paces. The officer's laughter was loud at the corner of
the next traverse, when there was an abrupt descent into a slough of
despond.

"And I hope they can swim!" said an ironical voice from a dugout, as the
officers passed. They were lying in wet mud in those square burrows, the
men who had been working all night under their platoon commanders, and
were now sleeping and resting in their trench dwellings. As I paddled
on I glanced at those men lying on straw which gave out a moist smell,
mixed with the pungent vapors of chloride of lime. They were not
interested in the German guns, which were giving their daily dose of
"hate" to the village of Becourt-Becordel. The noise did not interrupt
their heavy, slumbrous breathing. Some of those who were awake were
reading novelettes, forgetting war in the eternal