Michael

the old ones. The trench, like all the others,was excavated in short, zigzag lengths, so that no point, either toright or left, commanded more than a score of yards of it.

  In front, from just outside the parapet to a depth of some twenty yards,stretched the spider-web of wire entanglements, and a little fartherdown on the right there had been a copse of horn-beam saplings. Anattempt had been made by the enemy during the morning to capture andentrench this, thus advancing their lines, but the movement had beenseen, and the artillery fire, which had been so incessant all themorning, denoted the searching of this and the rendering of ituntenable. How thorough that searching had been was clear, for thatwhich had been an acre of wood was now but a heap of timber fit only forfaggots. Scarcely a tree was left standing, and Michael, looking outof one of the peep-holes by the light of a star-shell saw that the wireentanglements were thick with leaves that the wind and the firing haddetached from the broken branches. In turn, the wire entanglements hadcome in for some shelling by the enemy, and a squad of men were out nowunder cover of the darkness repairing these. There was a slight dip inthe ground here, and by crouching and lying they were out of sight ofthe trenches opposite; but there were some snipers in that which hadbeen a wood, from whom there came occasional shots. Then, from lowerdown to the right, there came a fusillade from the English linessuddenly breaking out, and after a few minutes as suddenly stoppingagain. But the sniping from the wood had ceased.

  Michael did not come on duty till six in the morning, and for thepresent he had nothing to do except eat his rations and sleep as well ashe could in his dug-out. He had plenty of room to stretch his legs if hesat half upright, and having taken his Major's advice in the matter ofbringing his fur coat with him, he found himself warm enough, in spiteof the rather bitter wind that, striking an angle in the trench wall,eddied sharply into his retreat, to sleep. But not less justified thanthe advice to bring his fur coat was his Major's assurance that theattack of the horrors which had seized him after dinner that day, wouldpass off when the waiting was over. Throughout the evening hisnerves had been perfectly steady, and, when in their progress up thecommunication trench they had passed a man half disembowelled by afragment of a shell, and screaming, or when, as he trod on one of theuneasy places an arm had stirred and jerked up suddenly through thehandful of earth that covered it, he had no first-hand sense of horror:he felt rather as if those things were happening not to him but tosomeone else, and that, at the most, they were strange and odd, but nolonger horrible. But now, when reinforced by food again and comfortablebeneath his fur cloak he let his mind do what it would, not checkingit, but allowing it its natural internal activity, he found that a moodtranscending any he had known yet was his. So far from these experiencesbeing terrifying, so far from their being strange and unreal, theysuddenly became intensely real and shone with a splendour that he hadnever suspected. Originally he had been pitchforked by his father intothe army, and had left it to seek music. Sense of duty had made it easyfor him to return to it at a time of national peril; but during all thebitter anxiety of that he had never, as in the light of the perceptionthat came to him now, as the wind whistled round him in the dim litdarkness, had a glimpse of the glory of service to his country. Here,out in this small, evil-smelling cavern, with the whole grim business ofwar going on round him, he for the first time fully realised the realityof it all. He had been in the trenches before, but until now that hadseemed some vague, evil dream, of which he was incredulous. Now in thedarkness the darkness cleared, and the knowledge that this was the verything itself, that a couple of hundred yards away were the lines of theenemy, whose power, for the honour of England and for the freedom ofEurope, had to be broken utterly, filled him with a sense of firm,indescribable joy. The minor problems which had worried him, the factof millions of treasure that might have fed the poor and needy over allBritain for a score of years, being outpoured in fire and steel, thefact of thousands of useful and happy lives being sacrificed, of widowsand orphans and childless mothers growing ever a greater company--allthese things, terrible to look at, if you looked at them alone, sankquietly into their sad appointed places when you looked at the thingentire. His own case sank there, too; music and life and love for whichhe would so rapturously have lived, were covered up now, and at thismoment he would as rapturously have died, if, by his death, he couldhave served in his own infinitesimal degree, the cause he fought for.

  The hours went on, whether swiftly or slowly he did not consider.The wind fell, and for some minutes a heavy shower of rain plumpedvertically into the trench. Once during it a sudden illumination blazedin the sky, and he saw the pebbles in the wall opposite shining withthe fresh-falling drops. There were a dozen rifle-shots and he sawthe sentry who had just passed brushing the edge of his coat againstMichael's hand, pause, and look out through the spy-hole close by, andsay something to himself. Occasionally he dozed for a little, and wokeagain from dreaming of Sylvia, into complete consciousness of where hewas, and of that superb joy that pervaded him. By and by these dozingsgrew longer, and the intervals of wakefulness less, and for a couple ofhours before he was roused he slept solidly and dreamlessly.

  His spell of duty began before dawn, and he got up to go his rounds,rather stiff and numb, and his sleep seemed to have wearied ratherthan refreshed him. In that hour of early morning, when vitality burnslowest, and the dying part their hold on life, the thrill that hadpossessed him during the earlier hours of the night, had died down. Heknew, having once felt it, that it was there, and believed that it wouldcome when called upon; but it had drowsed as he slept, and was overlaidby the sense of the grim, inexorable side of the whole business. Adisconcerting bullet was plugged through a spy-hole the second afterhe had passed it; it sounded not angry, but merely business-like, andMichael found himself thinking that shots "fired in anger," as thephrase went, were much more likely to go wide than shots fired calmly.. . . That, in his sleepy brain, did not sound nonsense: it seemed tocontain some great truth, if he could bother to think it out.

  But for that, all was quiet again, and he had returned to his dug-out,just noticing that the dawn was beginning to break, for the cloudsoverhead were becoming visible in outline with the light that filteredthrough them, and on their thinner margin turning rose-grey, when thealarm of an attack came down the line. Instantly the huddled, sleepingbodies that lay at the side of the trench started into being, and in themoment's pause that followed, Michael found himself fumbling at the buttof his revolver, which he had drawn out of its case. For that one momenthe heard his heart thumping in his throat, and felt his mouth growdry with some sudden panic fear that came from he knew not where, andinvaded him. A qualm of sickness took him, something gurgled in histhroat, and he spat on the floor of the trench. All this passed in onesecond, for at once he was master of himself again, though not master ofa savage joy that thrilled him--the joy of this chance of killing thosewho fought against the peace and prosperity of the world. There was anattack coming out of the dark, and thank God, he was among those who hadto meet it.

  He gave the order that had been passed to him, and on the word, thissection of the trench was lined with men ready to pour a volley over thelow parapet. He was there, too, wildly excited, close to the spy-holethat now showed as a luminous disc against the blackness of the trench.He looked out of this, and in the breaking dawn he saw nothing butthe dark ground of the dip in front, and the level lines of the Germantrenches opposite. Then suddenly the grey emptiness was peopled; theresprang from the earth the advance line of the surprise, who began hewinga way through the entanglements, while behind the silhouette of thetrenches was broken into a huddled, heaving line of men. Then came theorder to fire, and he saw men dropping and falling out of sight, andothers coming on, and yet again others. These, again, fell, but others(and now he could see the gleam of bayonets) came nearer, bursting andcutting their way through the wires. Then, from opposite to right andleft sounded the crack of rifles, and the man next to Michael gave onegrunt, and fell back into the trench, mov
ing no more.

  Just immediately opposite were the few dozen men whose part it was tocut through the entanglements. They kept falling and passing out ofsight, while others took their places. And then, for some reason,Michael found himself singling out just one of these, much in advance ofthe others, who was now close to the parapet. He was coming straight onhim, and with a leap he cleared the last line of wire and towered abovehim. Michael shot him with his revolver as he stood but three yards fromhim, and he fell right across the parapet with head and shoulders insidethe trench. And, as he dropped, Michael shouted, "Got him!" and then helooked. It was Hermann.

  Next moment he had scaled the side of the trench and, exerting allhis strength, was dragging him over into safety. The advance of thissection, who were to rush the trench, had been stopped, and again fromright and left the rifle-fire poured out on the heads that appearedabove the parapet. That did not