The result was that he was simultaneously despised and loved—­ despised by the self-advertising school, of which there are plenty in every army, and loved—­with something like fanaticism by his junior officers and men.

“I agree to that,” he said simply, screwing in his monocle.  Then he turned and instructed the Sikhs in their own language.

“You follow last,” he said to me.  “Now—­all ready?”

He had a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other, but had to stow them both away again in order to crawl in the tunnel.  Grim had no weapon in sight.  The two Sikhs who were to lead had stripped themselves of everything that might make a noise, but the others kept both boots and rifles, with bayonets fixed, for it did not much matter what racket they made.  In fact, the more noise we, who followed, made, the better, since that would draw attention from the Sikhs in front.  All we had to do was to keep our bodies below Grim’s kite affair, out of the probable line of fire.

Nevertheless, that dark hole was untempting.  A dank smell came out of it, like the breath of those old Egyptian tombs in which the bones of horses, buried with their masters, lie all about on shelves.  You couldn’t see into it more than a yard or two, for the only light came through the doorway of the windowless room, and the tunnel led into the womb of rock where, perhaps, no light had been since Solomon’s day.

But the leading Sikhs went in without hesitation and got down on their bellies.  They might have been swallowed whole for all that I heard or saw of them from that minute.  You could guess why the Turks and Germans had not really craved to meet those fellows out in No-man’s-land.

Grim went in on all-fours like a weird animal, with my shirt dancing on its frame above his back.  Goodenough went next, peering through that window-pane monocle like a deep-sea fish.  All the rest of the Sikhs went after him in Indian file, dragging their rifle-butts along the tunnel floor and making noise enough to remind you of the New York subway.

I went in at the tail end, trying at intervals to peer around a khaki-covered Punjaub rump, alternately getting my head and fingers bruised by heels I could not see and a rifle-butt that only moved in jerks when you didn’t expect it to.  My nose was bleeding at the end of ten yards.

But you couldn’t keep your distance.  Whenever the men in front checked at some obstruction or paused to listen, all those behind closed up; and by the time those behind had run their noses against iron-shod heels the men in front were on their way again.  You couldn’t see a thing until you rammed your head into it, and then the sense of touch gave you a sort of sight suggestion, as when you see things in a dream.  As for sound, the tunnel acted like a whispering gallery, mixing all the noises up together, so that you could not guess whether a man had spoken, or a stone had fallen, or a pistol had gone off, or all three.