Together there mounts from our lines and from the enemy’s such a cloud of rockets that they unite and mingle in constellations; at one moment, to light us on our hideous way, there was a Great Bear of star-shells in the valley of the sky that we could see between the parapets.

* * * * * *

We are lost again, and this time we must be close to the first lines; but a depression in this part of the plain forms a sort of basin, overrun by shadows.  We have marched along a sap and then back again.  In the phosphorescent vibration of the guns, shimmering like a cinematograph, we make out above the parapet two stretcher-bearers trying to cross the trench with their laden stretcher.

The lieutenant, who at least knows the place where he should guide the team of workers, questions them, “Where is the New Trench?”—­“Don’t know.”  From the ranks another question is put to them, “How far are we from the Boches?” They make no reply, as they are talking among themselves.

“I’m stopping,” says the man in front; “I’m too tired.”

“Come, get on with you, nom de Dieu!” says the other in a surly tone and floundering heavily, his arms extended by the stretcher.  “We can’t step and rust here.”

They put the stretcher down on the parapet, the edge of it overhanging the trench, and as we pass underneath we can see the prostrate man’s feet.  The rain which falls on the stretcher drains from it darkened.

“Wounded?” some one asks down below.

“No, a stiff,” growls the bearer this time, “and he weighs twelve stone at least.  Wounded I don’t mind—­for two days and two nights we haven’t left off carrying ’em—­but it’s rotten, breaking yourself up with lugging dead men about.”  And the bearer, upright on the edge of the bank, drops a foot to the base of the opposite bank across the cavity, and with his legs wide apart, laboriously balanced, he grips the stretcher and begins to draw it across, calling on his companion to help him.

A little farther we see the stooping form of a hooded officer, and as he raises his hand to his face we see two gold lines on his sleeve.  He, surely, will tell us the way.  But he addresses us, and asks if we have not seen the battery he is looking for.  We shall never get there!

But we do, all the same.  We finish up in a field of blackness where a few lean posts are bristling.  We climb up to it, and spread out in silence.  This is the spot.

The placing of us is an undertaking.  Four separate times we go forward and then retire, before the company is regularly echeloned along the length of the trench to be dug, before an equal interval is left between each team of one striker and two shovelers.  “Incline three paces more—­too much—­one pace to the rear.  Come, one pace to the rear—­are you deaf?—­Halt!  There!”

This adjustment is done by the lieutenant and a noncom. of the Engineers who has sprung up out of the ground.  Together or separately they run along the file and give their muttered orders into the men s ears as they take them by the arm, sometimes, to guide them.  Though begun in an orderly way, the arrangement degenerates, thanks to the ill temper of the exhausted men, who must continually be uprooting themselves from the spot where the undulating mob is stranded.