“One night there was a digging expedition.  An advance trench was to be made in No Man’s Land about a hundred and fifty yards from the Germans.  I was in command of the covering party of thirty-five men; I was a captain.  We, of course, went out ahead.  Beaurame was in the party.  It was his first fighting.  We had rifles, with bayonets, and bombs, and a couple of Lewis guns.  We came up to the trenches by a road, then went into the zigzag communication trenches up to the front, the fire-trench.  Then, very cautiously, over the top into No Man’s Land.  It was nervous work, for at any second they might discover us and open fire.  It suited us all to be as quiet as human men could be, and when once in a while a star-shell, a Very light, was sent up from the German lines we froze in our tracks till the white glare died out.

“The party had been digging for perhaps an hour when hell broke loose.  They’d seen us.  All about was a storm of machine-gun and rifle bullets, and we dropped on our faces, the diggers in their trench—­pretty shallow it was.  As for the covering party, we simply took our medicine.  And then the shrapnel joined the music.  Word was passed to get back to the trenches, and we started promptly.  We stooped low as we ran over No Man’s Land, but there were plenty of casualties.  I got mine in the foot, but not the wound which rung in this—­” Thornton nodded his head at the crutches with a smile.  “It was from a bit of shrapnel just as I made the trench, and as I fell in I caught at the sand bags and whirled about facing out over No Man’s Land; as I whirled I saw, close by, Beaurame’s face in a shaft of light.  I don’t know why I made conversation at that moment—­I did.  I said: 

“When did you get back?”

And his answer came as if clicked on a typewriter.  “Me, I stayed, Mon Capitaine.  It had an air too dangerous, out there.”

I stared in a white rage.  You’ll imagine—­one of my men to dare tell me that!  And at that second, simultaneously, came the flare of a shell star and a shout of a man struck down, and I knew the voice—­John Dudley.  He was out there, the tail end of the party, wounded.  I saw him as he fell, on the farther side of the new trench.  Of course, one’s instinct was to dash back and bring him in, and I started.  And I found my foot gone—­I couldn’t walk.  Quicker than I can tell it I turned to Beaurame, the coward, who’d been afraid to go over the top, and I said in French, because, though I hadn’t time to think it out, I yet realized that it would get to him faster so—­I said: 

“Get over there, you deserter.  Save the lieutenant—­Lieutenant Dudley.  Go.”