It was about ten o’clock when I came away from Monty’s home in the Eski Line, where I had made my Confession.  I retain an impression of myself, as I walked homeward through the darkness, moving along the summits above Y Ravine.  I was listening to the nervous night-firing of the Turk, who was apprehensive of something in the morning, and hearing in my mind Monty’s last words:  “Forget those things which are behind, and press towards the mark of your high calling.”

Walking along the Peninsula at night being always a gloomy matter, I was glad to arrive at the dug-out, where Doe was already under his blankets.  I lay down and spent a long time battling with my mind to prevent it keeping me awake by too active thinking.  For, if only I could drop off into unconsciousness, I had the chance of sleeping till an hour before the dawn.

Sec.6

There is something depressing in being called while it is still dark, and being obliged to dress by artificial light.  As I laced my boots by the flame of the candle in the dusk before the dawn, I felt a sensation I used to experience at school, when they lit the class-room gas in the early twilight of a winter afternoon—­a sensation of the sadness and futility of all things.

I awoke Doe, and could tell, as he sat up, rubbing his eyes and yawning, that returning memory was filling his mind with speculation as to what unthinkable things the morning might hold in its womb.  With the feigned gaiety of the day before he flung off his blankets, and said: 

“Well, Roop, it’s ‘over the top and the best of luck’ for us this morning.”

“Strange how quiet everything is,” I replied.  “The bombardment ought to have started before this.”

“Yes, it’s a still and top-hole morning.”  Saying this, Doe went to the dug-out window to look at the dawn.  The moment that his face framed itself in the square of the window, dawn, coming in like an AEgean sunset with a violet light, lit up his half-profile, throwing into clear relief the familiar features, and dropping a brilliant spark into each of his wide, contemplative eyes.  The effect was a thing of the stage:  it lent him an added wistfulness, and I felt a pang of pity for him, and a throb of something not lower than love.  He walked back to his bed, whistling, while I completed my preparations by fixing my revolver to my belt.

“Well, I’m ready,” I said.  “I must go and look at my braves.”

“Don’t s’pose I shall see you again, then, before the show,” said Doe, pulling on his boots nonchalantly.

“No.  We’ll compare notes in the captured trenches this evening.”

“Right you are.  Cheerioh!”

“Chin-chin.”

I went out, reviewing painful possibilities.  In the trenches I found my company “standing-to,” armed and ready.  Knowing that idle waiting would mean suspense and agitation, I went about overhauling ammunition, and instructing my men on the exact objectives and the work of consolidation.  My restlessness brought back vividly that day when I had suffered from nerves before the Bramhall-Erasmus swimming race.  The same interior hollowness made me chafe at delay and long to be started—­to be busied in the excitement of action—­to be looking back on it all as a thing of the past.