The road curled sharply round the rock precipice, and plunged into a thick forest.  A guide had met them, and absolute silence was ordered.  They had breasted the rise, and were nearing the trenches.  The road had ceased abruptly, and the paths that they had laboured along were nothing but narrow canals of mud.  Here and there a few broken trees and mangled branches showed where a shell had burst.

Hands were held up silently in front.  A halt was ordered for a few minutes, while the leading Platoon moved along into its allotted trenches.  They had arrived.

Nothing warned the Subaltern, when at length he was shown the line for his own Platoon, that this night was to be any different from any of the other nights he had spent in the face of the enemy.

It was not, strictly speaking, a line of trenches at all.  As usual, each man had dug a hole by himself, and each man was his own architect.  Very few holes had been connected by a rough sort of trench at the back.  The Captain had described the topography of the situation very exactly.  The holes were dug on the borders of the forest, but were concealed from enemy artillery observation by the trees.  The field of fire was absolutely open.  It stretched to the top of the hill, which formed their horizon, a distance of rather less than two hundred yards.  It was smooth grass, and it struck the Subaltern as being exceptionally green.  A few dead cows, in the usual grotesque attitudes of animals in death, were scattered over the green grass.

He selected his hole, and then began to take careful stock of his surroundings.  The fact that he could see no sign of the opposite trenches perhaps lulled him into a sense of false security.  Anyway, after having disposed of his haversack, and the sacks he had brought up with him, he got up from his hole, and began to walk along behind the holes.  On the extreme left he found his Sergeant.

“Well, this looks a pretty safe position,” he said.

“Yes, sir.  I’ve just had a shot at a man’s head that I thought I saw out there.  I can’t say whether or no I shot him.  He disappeared quick enough.  I should put the range at two hundred and fifty, sir.”

“I wonder what is on our left, here?” he asked.

“I don’t know, sir.  I haven’t had time to look.”

“I think I had better go and find out for myself.”

He set off, pursuing his way through the thick undergrowth and trees.  It was longer than he thought.  But all was still quiet, so the thought of being “spotted” in the open did not occur to him.

He found the edge of the next trench.  It was thrown forward in front of the wood.  After making the usual arrangements that are vaguely called “establishing touch,” he turned back out of the shelter of the parapet, over the dangerous ground.

Twilight was deepening every second.  He did not run; and he only hurried, because he wanted to get really established in his “funk hole” before it grew too dark to see what he was doing.