Everybody sought shelter in the cellars, or any other hole they could crawl into, until night.  I searched out my mule, and was thankful to find it where I had left it, tied to a tree, gave it a feed of oats, waited until it munched, unperturbed by the crashing explosions breaking in the immediate neighborhood, and utterly oblivious of the fact that I was counting the seconds until it had finished.

Under cover of the night, I returned to the wagon lines, and in much better time than coming down, for which I had to thank the feed of oats.  The bath gave me a new hold on life; I felt ten years younger and several pounds lighter.

I learned next day that the station master at Poperinghe had been arrested, tried as a spy and shot.  It transpired that he had a wire running from the station depot straight to the German lines, together with some other signaling apparatus, and there was no doubt in the minds of the trial board that it was due to this man’s espionage that the bathers lost their lives while in the tubs.

The spy system had so thoroughly impregnated every hole and corner of the district around Ypres that it became the sorest thorn in the sides of the Command, but we finally managed to root it out hip and thigh, and that sector is now as immune from their activities as any other sector in the front lines.

Going up to take my position with the gun next day I met a bomber of the 21st Canadian Infantry, carrying a bag of his wares—­hand grenades.  We walked together for some distance, and just as I was on the point of leaving him to turn off over to my battery I was appalled by one of the most horrifying sights I have seen at the front.  One of the pins of a grenade worked loose in the bag and exploded, blowing his right hand and leg completely off.  I have seen scores of happenings, each of which in its entirety was a thousand times more terrible, but there was something about the suddenness, the total unexpectedness, and the fearful spurting of his life’s blood, that filled me more full of horror than anything before or since.

In this conflagration that is shaking the world, death stalks on every hand in a hundred different forms, entirely apart from the destruction that the enemy can bestow.  I was standing but three feet behind him.  As quick as I could I gave him first aid and yelled for a stretcher, but there was nothing that could be done; he lived until sundown.

CHAPTER IX

HAMBONE DAVIS

One evening we were sitting outside of our bivouac watching some German balloons being downed by one of our airplanes; our flier had good luck that evening, accounting for three of the floating sausages; and as we were awaiting the finish of the last sausage, and speculating on how long it would take our air bird to get it, or whether he would get it at all, the gambling spirit ran rife, and fast and furiously the bets were placed.