In the trench itself eyes are strained and ears cocked.  It is an eerie sensation to know that men are near you, and creeping nearer, yet remain inaudible and invisible.  It is a very dark night.  The moon appears to have gone to bed for good, and the stars are mostly covered.  Men unconsciously endeavour to fan the darkness away with their hands, like mist.  The broken ground in front, with the black woods beyond, might be concealing an army corps for all the watchers in the trenches can tell.  Far away to the south a bright finger of light occasionally stabs the murky heavens.  It is the searchlight of a British cruiser, keeping ceaseless vigil in the English Channel, fifteen miles away.  If she were not there we should not be making-believe here with such comfortable deliberation.  It would be the real thing.

Bobby Little, who by this time can almost discern spiked German helmets in the gloom, stands tingling.  On either side of him are ranged the men of his platoon—­some eager, some sleepy, but all silent.  For the first time he notices that in the distant woods ahead of him there is a small break—­a mere gap—­through which one or two stars are twinkling.  If only he could contrive to get a line of sight direct to that patch of sky—­

He moves a few yards along the trench, and brings his eye to the ground-level.  No good:  a bush intervenes, fifteen yards away.  He moves further and tries again.

Suddenly, for a brief moment, against the dimly illuminated scrap of horizon, he descries a human form, clad in a kilt, advancing stealthily....

“Number one Platoon—­at the enemy in front—­rapid fire!”

He is just in time.  There comes an overwrought roar of musketry all down the line of trenches.  Simultaneously, a solid wall of men rises out of the earth not fifty yards away, and makes for the trenches with a long-drawn battle yell.

Make-believe has its thrills as well as the genuine article.

And so home to bed.  M’Snape duly became a lance-corporal, while Dunshie resigned his post as a scout and returned to duty with the company.

XI

OLYMPUS

Under this designation it is convenient to lump the whole heavenly host which at present orders our goings and shapes our ends.  It includes—­

(1) The War Office;

(2) The Treasury;

(3) The Army Ordnance Office;

(4) Our Divisional Office;

—­and other more local and immediate homes of mystery.

The Olympus which controls the destinies of “K(1)” differs in many respects from the Olympus of antiquity, but its celestial inhabitants appear to have at least two points in common with the original body—­namely, a childish delight in upsetting one another’s arrangements, and an untimely sense of humour when dealing with mortals.

So far as our researches have gone, we have been able to classify
Olympus, roughly, into three departments—­