‘’e’s a nice chap, Mr Sothern,’ observed Williams, with a face of immovable melancholy.

‘Quite,’ Bourne agreed. ‘However, there’s a big dug-out in Legend Trench, and between that and the corner of Flag Alley I saw a box of ammunition that had been dumped. It was lying by the duck-boards. It may have been the one I gave Mr Sothern: “lost owing to the exigencies of active service.” That’s what the court of inquiry said about Patsy Pope’s false teeth.’

Williams went on with his work.

‘It won’t be long before you lads are for it again,’ he said in his quiet way.

‘No,’ said Bourne, reluctantly, for there was a note of furtive sympathy in Williams’ voice which embarrassed him.

‘The whole place is simply lousy with guns,’ continued the cook.

‘Why the hell can’t you talk of something else?’ exclaimed Bourne, impatiently. ‘Jerry chased us all the way home last night. Mr Sothern, who knows no more about the bloody map than I do, tried a short cut, and wandered off in the direction of Colin-camps, until we fetched up in front of one of our field batteries, and were challenged. Then an officer came up and remonstrated with him. After that, when we got on the road again and Fritz started sending a few across, you should have seen us! Leaning over like a field of corn in the wind.’

‘A lot o’ them are new to it, yet,’ said Williams, tolerantly. ‘You might take a drop o’ tea up to the corporal, will you? ’e’s a nice chap, Corporal ’amley. I gave ’im some o’ your toffees last night, an’ we was talkin’ about you. I’ll fill it, in case you feel like some more.’

Bourne took it, thanking him, and lounged off. There was now a little more movement in the camp, and when he got back to his own tent he found all the occupants awake, enjoying a moment of indecision before they elected to dress. He poured some tea into Corporal Hamley’s tin, and then gave some to Martlow, and there was about a third left.

‘Who wants tea?’ he said.

‘I do,’ said Weeper Smart, and in his blue shirt with cuffs unbuttoned and white legs sprawled out behind him, he lunged awkwardly across the tent, holding out his dixie with one hand. Smart was an extraordinary individual, with the clumsy agility of one of the greater apes; though the carriage of his head rather suggested the vulture, for the neck projected from wide, sloping shoulders, rounded to a stoop; the narrow forehead, above arched eyebrows, and the chin, under loose pendulous lips, both receded abruptly, and the large, fleshy beak, jutting forward between protruding blue eyes, seemed to weigh down the whole face. His skin was an unhealthy white, except at the top of the nose and about the nostrils, where it had a shiny redness, as though he suffered from an incurable cold: it was rather pimply. An almost complete beardlessness made the lack of pigmentation more marked, and even the fine, sandy hair of his head grew thinly. It would have been the face of an imbecile, but for the expression of unmitigated misery in it, or it would have been a tragic face if it had possessed any element of nobility; but it was merely abject, a mask of passive suffering, at once pitiful and repulsive. It was inevitable that men, living day by day with such a spectacle of woe, should learn in self-defence to deride it; and it was this sheer necessity which had impelled some cruel wit of the camp to fling at him the name of Weeper, and make that forlorn and cadaverous figure the butt of an endless jest. He gulped his tea, and his watery eyes turned towards Bourne with a cunning malevolence.