Harrison seemed a little peevish, but consented to try again.  The rope tautened, and there was a sharp crack from below.

“’Old on,” cried the prisoner sharply, “me braces is bust.”

“Can’t think o’ braces now,” grunted my burly sergeant.  “Heave-ho, lads, up she comes!”

Harrison was pulled clean out of his nether garments, cursing bitterly as the wind caught his bare legs, and hung suspended between earth and water, amid ribald comments from above.

One more pull would do it.  But at that moment Fritz, apparently feeling that we weren’t taking his war seriously enough, opened up with a machine-gun.  The rescue party dropped the rope and rolled heavily into the shell-hole, and the sorely tried Harrison found himself back again, but face downwards this time, and held by his arms up to the elbows.

We could hear horrible language, and after a moment, all being quiet, I crawled to the edge and looked over.  His last struggle had split Harrison’s tunic and pulled it clean off his back; and now, with his shirt-tail trailing dismally in the Ooze, he was making the best of his own way to the dressing-station, ungratefully consigning his gallant rescuers to complete and lasting perdition as he went.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “A LOT OF KHAKI ABOUT, WAITER.”

“YES, SIR.  IT MAKES SOME OF US OLDER ONES FEEL A BIT MUFTI, DON’T IT?”]

* * * * *

A TOPICAL TRAGEDY.

  Jim Startin was not loved at school;
  We thought him rather knave than fool. 
  Migrating thence to Oxford, he
  Failed to secure a pass degree. 
  Years sped—­some twenty—­ere again
  Jim Startin swam into my ken. 
  I met him strolling down the Strand
  Well-dressed, well-nourished, sleek and bland,
  A high-class journalistic swell—­
  The Headline Expert of The Yell. 
  Great at the art, in peaceful days,
  Of finding means our scalps to raise,
  The War had since revealed in him
  A super-Transatlantic vim,
  And day by day his paper’s bills
  Gave us fresh epileptic thrills. 
  The sons of Belial, in the rhyme
  Of DRYDEN, had a glorious time,
  But never managed to attain
  To Jim’s success in giving pain. 
  But while his power was at its height
  It perished in a single night;
  For, with his bills by law abolished,
  Jim’s occupation was demolished;
  Headlines that can’t be blazed abroad
  On bills and posters are a fraud;
  They cease to titillate the mob
  Or draw the pennies from its fob,
  So Jim was “fired” and lost his job.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Lady (to coalheavers). “SO SWEET OF YOU TO COME.  I DO HOPE YOU’LL COME AGAIN.”]

* * * * *

“More to the west the British marked fresh progress south of Achiet-le-Petit, where their lines were advanced on a front of 2 kilometres (1-1/4 miles).  Finally the Germans fell back for the length of 2 kilometres (5/8 mile) between Essarts and Gommecourt.”—­The Evening News.

The road home always seems shorter.