Yes, they were murderers—­but how terrible!  And he stood quivering, with his hands pressed to his face, till the cheering had died out into silence.

“Let’s pray, Nollie!” he whispered.  “O God, Who in Thy great mercy hath delivered us from peril, take into Thy keeping the souls of these our enemies, consumed by Thy wrath before our eyes; give us the power to pity them—­men like ourselves.”

But even while he prayed he could see Noel’s face flame-white in the darkness; and, as that glow in the sky faded out, he felt once more the thrill of triumph.

They went down to tell the maids, and for some time after sat up together, talking over what they had seen, eating biscuits and drinking milk, which they warmed on an etna.  It was nearly two o’clock before they went to bed.  Pierson fell asleep at once, and never turned till awakened at half-past six by his alarum.  He had Holy Communion to administer at eight, and he hurried to get early to his church and see that nothing untoward had happened to it.  There it stood in the sunlight; tall, grey, quiet, unharmed, with bell gently ringing.

3

And at that hour Cyril Morland, under the parapet of his trench, tightening his belt, was looking at his wrist-watch for the hundredth time, calculating exactly where he meant to put foot and hand for the going over:  ‘I absolutely mustn’t let those chaps get in front of me,’ he thought.  So many yards before the first line of trenches, so many yards to the second line, and there stop.  So his rehearsals had gone; it was the performance now!  Another minute before the terrific racket of the drum-fire should become the curtain-fire, which would advance before them.  He ran his eye down the trench.  The man next him was licking his two first fingers, as if he might be going to bowl at cricket.  Further down, a man was feeling his puttees.  A voice said:  “Wot price the orchestra nah!” He saw teeth gleam in faces burnt almost black.  Then he looked up; the sky was blue beyond the brownish film of dust raised by the striking shells.  Noel!  Noel!  Noel!...  He dug his fingers deep into the left side of his tunic till he could feel the outline of her photograph between his dispatch-case and his heart.  His heart fluttered just as it used when he was stretched out with hand touching the ground, before the start of the “hundred yards” at school.  Out of the corner of his eye he caught the flash of a man’s “briquet” lighting a cigarette.  All right for those chaps, but not for him; he wanted all his breath—­this rifle, and kit were handicap enough!  Two days ago he had been reading in some paper how men felt just before an attack.  And now he knew.  He just felt nervous.  If only the moment would come, and get itself over!  For all the thought he gave to the enemy there might have been none—­nothing but shells and bullets, with lives of their own.  He heard the whistle; his foot was on the spot he had marked down; his hand