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 where he had seen it; he called out:  “Now, boys!” His head was over the top, his body over; he was conscious of someone falling, and two men neck and neck beside him.  Not to try and run, not to break out of a walk; to go steady, and yet keep ahead!  D—­n these holes!  A bullet tore through his sleeve, grazing his arm—­a red-hot sensation, like the touch of an iron.  A British shell from close over his head burst sixty yards ahead; he stumbled, fell flat, picked himself up.  Three ahead of him now!  He walked faster, and drew alongside.  Two of them fell.  ‘What luck!’ he thought; and gripping his rifle harder, pitched headlong into a declivity.  Dead bodies lay there!  The first German trench line, and nothing alive in it, nothing to clean up, nothing of it left!  He stopped, getting his wind; watching the men panting and stumbling in.  The roar of the guns was louder than ever again, barraging the second line.  So far, good!  And here was his captain!

“Ready, boys?  On, then!”

This time he moved more slowly still, over terrible going, all holes and hummocks.  Half consciously he took cover all he could.  The air was alive with the whistle from machine-gun fire storming across zigzag fashion-alive it was with bullets, dust, and smoke.  ’How shall I tell her?’ he thought.  There would be nothing to tell but just a sort of jagged brown sensation.  He kept his eyes steadily before him, not wanting to seethe men falling, not wanting anything to divert him from getting there.  He felt the faint fanning of the passing bullets.  The second line must be close now.