ame half-way up to the knee, and each foot
had to be lifted with an effort, and was set free with a smacking suck.
Elsewhere, if the ground was gravelly, the rain which for two days
previously had been incessant, had drained off, and the going was easy.
But whether the path lay over dry or soft places the air was sick with
some stale odour which the breeze that swept across the lines from the
south-east could not carry away. There was a perpetual pervading reek
that flowed along from the entrance of trenches to right and left, that
reminded Michael of the smell of a football scrimmage on a wet day,
laden with the odours of sweat and dripping clothes, and something
deadlier and more acrid. Sometimes they passed under a section covered
in with boards, over which the earth and clods of turf had been
replaced, so that reconnoitring aeroplanes should not so easily spy it
out, and here from dark excavations the smell hung overpoweringly. Now
and then the ground over which they passed yielded uneasily to the foot,
where lay, only lightly covered over, some corpse which it had been
impossible to remove, and from time to time they passed a huddled bundle
of khaki not yet taken away. But except for the artillery duel that
day they had heard going on that morning, the last day or two had been
quiet, and the wounded had all been got out, and for the most part the
dead also.

After a long tramp in this communication trench they made a sharp turn
to the right, and entered that which they were going to hold for
the next forty-eight hours. Here they relieved the regiment that
had occupied it till now, who filed out as they came in. Along it at
intervals were excavations dug out in the side, some propped up with
boards and posts, others, where the ground was of sufficiently holding
character, just scooped out. In front, towards the German lines ran a
parapet of excavated earth, with occasional peep-holes bored in it, so
that the sentry going his rounds could look out and see if there was
any sign of movement from opposite without showing his head above the
entrenchment. But even this was a matter of some risk, since the enemy
had located these peep-holes, and from time to time fired a shot from a
fixed rifle that came straight through them and buried its bullet in the
hinder wall of the trench. Other spy-holes were therefore being made,
but these were not yet finished, and for the present till they were dug,
it was necessary to use the