Colonel Kirby was wounded a little, and sat while a risaldar bound his arm.  Ranjoor Singh found a short trench half full of water, and ordered us into it.  Although we had not realized it until then, it was raining torrents, and the Germans we drove out of that trench (there were but a few of them) were wetter than water rats; but we had to scramble down into it, and the cold bath finished what the sense of isolation had begun.  We were sober men when Kirby sahib scrambled in last and ordered us to begin on the trench at once with picks and shovels that the Germans had left behind.  We altered the trench so that it faced both ways, and waited shivering for the dawn.

Let it not be supposed, however, sahib, that we waited unmolested.  The Germans are not that kind of warrior.  I hold no brief for them, but I tell no lies about them, either.  They fight with persistence, bravery, and what they consider to be cunning.  We were under rifle-fire at once from before and behind and the flanks, and our own artillery began pounding the ground so close to us that fragments of shell and shrapnel flew over our heads incessantly, and great clods of earth came thumping and splashing into our trench, compelling us to keep busy with the shovels.  Nor did the German artillery omit to make a target of us, though with poor success.  More than the half of us lived; and to prove that there had been thought as well as bravery that night we had plenty of ammunition with us.  We were troubled to stow the ammunition out of the wet, yet where it would be safe from the German fire.

We made no reply to the shell-fire, for that would have been foolishness; so, doubtless thinking they had the range not quite right, or perhaps supposing that we had been annihilated, the enemy discontinued shelling us and devoted their attention to our friends beyond.  But at the same time a battalion of infantry began to feel its way toward us and we grew very busy with our rifles, the wounded crawling through the wet to pass the cartridges.  Once there was a bayonet charge, which we repelled.

Those who had not thrown away their knapsacks to lighten themselves had their emergency rations, but about half of us had nothing to eat whatever.  It was perfectly evident to all of us from the very first that unless we should receive prompt aid at dawn our case was as hopeless as death itself.  So much the more reason for stout hearts, said we, and our bearing put new heart into our officers.

When dawn came the sight was not inspiriting.  Dawn amid a waste of Flanders mud, seen through a rain-storm, is not a joyous spectacle in any case.  Consider, sahib, what a sunny land we came from, and pass no hasty judgment on us if our spirits sank.  It was the weather, not the danger that depressed us.  I, who was near the center of the trench, could see to right and left over the ends, and I made a hasty count of heads, discovering that we, who had been a regiment, were now about three hundred men, forty of whom were wounded.