“What’s it all about?”

“Heaven knows!  A sergeant spotted some trees waving in front of the moon, thought they were Turks, and gave the alarm.  He saw trees as men walking.  Sorry.  Can’t stay.”

I wandered along the trench, seeing the men of my platoon properly disposed so as to stiffen the resistance of B Company.  Then I returned for the latest news of the crisis to where Doe was conversing with an unknown officer.  They were recalling how they had once travelled in the train together from Paddington to Falmouth, and never seen each other again till this moment.  Doe was praising the lovely country through which the Great Western Railway passed—­Somerset, and the White Horse Vale, and the beautiful stretch of water at Dawlish; or the red cliffs of Devon, where the train ran along the coast.  Some of the red earth of Gallipoli, he said, reminded him of Devon’s red loam.

Evidently the Turkish attack was not going to materialise.  I stood upon the firing-step and looked over the parapet.  In the moonlight I could see the black sand-bags of the Turks’ front line, and the desolate waste of No Man’s Land....  Then my hand sprang to the butt of my revolver.  Something had moved in No Man’s Land.  “Look out!” I said.  “They’re coming!” just as from behind a bit of rising ground a figure rose on to its hands and knees.  I pointed my revolver at it, and pulled the trigger.  The figure collapsed, and rolled forwards till its progress was arrested by a rocky projection, over which it finally lay, doubled up like a bolster.  As it fell my heart gave a sickening leap, either of excitement or of fright.

At once the whole of the company front opened rapid fire.  A few things seemed to fall about in No Man’s Land, and I saw some figures pass across the moon as they scurried back to their trenches.

“Cease fire!” ordered the O.C. firing line.  “Merely a reconnaissance raid.  Silly trouts, these Turks.”

And Doe came up to me, saying almost enviously: 

“You’ve killed your man, Rupert.  Congratulations.”

Without answering I stood on the firing-step again, and looked at the limp form of my victim.  It was dead beyond question, shapeless and horrible.

I took my platoon back to the Bluff, dismissed it, and going up to my dug-out door, stood there for a moment thinking.  Since leaving it an hour ago I had killed a man.

“You mustn’t rest till you’ve slaughtered a Turk,” our new C.O. had said, for he was an apostle of the offensive spirit.  “Then, if they kill you, you’ll at least have taken a life for a life.  And any more that you kill before they finish you off will be clear gain for King George.”

Not wishing to go to bed yet, I went back to the firing line, and looked over our sand-bags once more.  The body was still there, shapeless and horrible, and as limp as a half-empty sack of coals.

Sec.2