During the night of Jan. 4th-5th attempts were made by strong
    detachments of the enemy to penetrate our line near Sloozleschump,
    S.E. of Ypres.  The attack failed utterly.

“And they don’t even realise that it was only a leg-pull!” commented the Company Commander who had stage-managed the affair.  “These people simply don’t deserve to have entertainments arranged for them at all.  Well, we must pull the limb again, that’s all!”

And it was so.

IV

THE PUSH THAT FAILED

I

“I wonder if they really mean business this time,” surmised that youthful Company Commander, Temporary Captain Bobby Little, to Major Wagstaffe.

“It sounds like it,” said Wagstaffe, as another salvo of “whizz-bangs” broke like inflammatory surf upon the front-line trenches.  “Intermittent strafes we are used to, but this all-day performance seems to indicate that the Boche is really getting down to it for once.  The whole proceeding reminds me of nothing so much as our own ‘artillery preparation’ before the big push at Loos.”

“Then you think the Boches are going to make a push of their own?”

“I do; and I hope it will be a good fat one.  When it comes, I fancy we shall be able to put up something rather pretty in the way of a defence.  The Salient is stiff with guns—­I don’t think the Boche quite realises how stiff!  And we owe the swine something!” he added through his teeth.

There was a pause in the conversation.  You cannot hold the Salient for three months without paying for the distinction; and the regiment had paid its full share.  Not so much in numbers, perhaps, as in quality.  Stray bullets, whistling up and down the trenches, coming even obliquely from the rear, had exacted most grievous toll.  Shells and trench-mortar bombs, taking us in flank, had extinguished many valuable lives.  At this time nothing but the best seemed to satisfy the Fates.  One day it would be a trusted colour-sergeant, on another a couple of particularly promising young corporals.  Only last week the Adjutant—­athlete, scholar, born soldier, and very lovable schoolboy, all most perfectly blended—­had fallen mortally wounded, on his morning round of the fire-trenches, by a bullet which came from nowhere.  He was the subject of Wagstaffe’s reference.

“Is it not possible,” suggested Mr. Waddell, who habitually considered all questions from every possible point of view, “that this bombardment has been specially initiated by the German authorities, in order to impress upon their own troops a warning that there must be no Christmas truce this year?”

“If that is the Kaiser’s Christmas greeting to his loving followers,” observed Wagstaffe drily, “I think he might safely have left it to us to deliver it!”

“They say,” interposed Bobby Little, “that the Kaiser is here himself.”