A whispered order comes down the line that M’Snape is to “investigate.”  He wriggles forward until his progress is arrested by a stunted bush.  Very stealthily he rises to his knees and peers over.  As he does so, a chance star-shell bursts squarely over him, and comes sizzling officiously down almost on to his back.  His head drops like a stone into the bush, but not before the ghostly magnesium flare has shown him what he came out to see—­a deep shell-crater.  The crater is full of Germans.  They look like grey beetles in a trap, and are busy with pick and shovel, apparently “improving” the crater and connecting it with their own fire-trenches.  They have no sentry out. Dormitat Homerus.

M’Snape worms his way back, and reports.  Then, in accordance with an oft-rehearsed scheme, the bombing party forms itself into an arc of a circle at a radius of some twenty yards from the stunted bush. (Not the least of the arts of bomb-throwing is to keep out of range of your own bombs.) Every man’s hand steals to his pocketed belt.  Next moment Simson flings the first bomb.  It flies fairly into the middle of the crater.

Half a dozen more go swirling after it.  There is a shattering roar; a cloud of smoke; a muffled rush, of feet; silence; some groans.  Almost simultaneously the German trenches are in an uproar.  A dozen star-shells leap to the sky; there is a hurried outburst of rifle fire; a machine-gun begins to patter out a stuttering malediction.

Meanwhile our friends, who have exhibited no pedantic anxiety to remain and behold the result of their labours, are lying upon their stomachs in a convenient fold in the ground, waiting patiently until such time as it shall be feasible to complete their homeward journey.

Half an hour later they do so, and roll one by one over the parapet into the trench.  Casualties are slight.  Private Nimmo has a bullet-wound in the calf of his leg, and Sergeant Carfrae, whom Nature does not permit to lie as flat as the others, will require some repairs to the pleats of his kilt.

“All present?” inquires Simson.

It is discovered that M’Snape has not returned.  Anxious eyes peer over the parapet.  The moon is stronger now, but it is barely possible to distinguish objects clearly for more than a few yards.

A star-shell bursts, and heads sink below the parapet.  A German bullet passes overhead, with a sound exactly like the crack of a whip.  Silence and comparative darkness return.  The heads go up again.

“I’ll give him five minutes more, and then go and look for him,” says Simson.  “Hallo!”

A small bush, growing just outside the barbed wire, rises suddenly to its feet; and, picking its way with incredible skill through the nearest opening, runs at full speed for the parapet.  Next moment it tumbles over into the trench.

Willing hands extracted M’Snape from his arboreal envelope—­he could probably have got home quite well without it, but once a Boy Scout, always a Boy Scout—­and he made his report.