I do not know if one may read print under these fusees.  I never had either the courage or the print for the experiment.  But these eyes of the night open and close silently all through the hours of darkness.  They hang over the trenches, reveal the movements of troops on the roads behind, shine on ammunition trains and ambulances, on the righteous and the unrighteous.  All along the German lines these fusees go up steadily.  I have seen a dozen in the air at once.  Their silence and the eternal vigilance which they reveal are most impressive.  On the quietest night, with only an occasional shot being fired, the horizon is ringed with them.

And on the horizon they are beautiful.  Overhead they are distinctly unpleasant.

“They are very uncomfortable,” I said to Captain F——.  “The Germans can see us plainly, can’t they?”

“But that is what they are for,” he explained.  “All movements of troops and ammunition trains to and from the trenches are made during the night, so they watch us very carefully.”

“How near are we to the trenches?” I asked.

“Very near, indeed.”

“To the first line?”

For I had heard that there were other lines behind, and with the cessation of the rain my courage was rising.  Nothing less than the first line was to satisfy me.

“To the first line,” he said, and smiled.

The wind which had driven the rain in sheets against the car had blown the storm away.  The moon came out, a full moon.  From the car I could see here and there the gleam of the inundation.  The road was increasingly bad, with shell holes everywhere.  Buildings loomed out of the night, roofless and destroyed.  The fusees rose and burst silently overhead; the entire horizon seemed encircled with them.  We were so close to the German lines that we could see an electric signal sending its message of long and short flashes, could even see the reply.  It seemed to me most unmilitary.

“Any one who knew telegraphy and German could read that message,” I protested.

“It is not so simple as that.  It is a cipher code, and is probably changed daily.”

Nevertheless, the officers in the car watched the signalling closely, and turning, surveyed the country behind us.  In so flat a region, with trees and shrubbery cut down and houses razed, even a pocket flash can send a signal to the lines of the enemy.  And such signals are sent.  The German spy system is thorough and far-reaching.

I have gone through Flanders near the lines at various times at night.  It is a dead country apparently.  There are destroyed houses, sodden fields, ditches lipful of water.  But in the most amazing fashion lights spring up and disappear.  Follow one of these lights and you find nothing but a deserted farm, or a ruined barn, or perhaps nothing but a field of sugar beets dying in the ground.