Bourne went in and sat by Weeper, who neither moved nor spoke to him; and after a few minutes the sergeant-major came in.

‘You may go back, Bourne; there probably won’t be anything but the report at midnight. Good night.’

‘Good night, Sergeant-Major,’ he said, and, taking up his rifle, climbed up the stairs into the rain and darkness again.

When he got back to the cellar, he found that Martlow had brought in a stray terrier. The dog was obviously suffering from shell-shock, he was trembling in a piteous way, and Martlow said that when he had caught him, he had tried to bite. The only domestic animal which Bourne had met among these deserted ruins, had been a gaunt and savage cat, which, on seeing him, had cursed the whole human race, and fled precipitately. They had supper, and some hot tea with their rum, persuaded the dog to eat a little bully, and then lay smoking on their beds. They heard trains of limbers passing through the village. Bourne and Martlow curled up to sleep, and Shem waited for the night report to take it back to Courcelles.

In the morning at seven o’clock Fritz sent over his three shells, and the trench mortar battery barked out the same reply as on the previous night. Fritz’s shells had fallen very close. Martlow went out first, and then put his head through the doorway to announce that the latrine had been blown up; where it had stood there was nothing but a large hole.

‘Well, what do you want,’ said Shem; ‘a bloody bathroom?’

The dog had another fit of shivering when the shells came over; but it recovered later; and Martlow took it outside for a short walk. Exploring the ruins a native instinct got the better of the dog’s recently acquired caution, and it disappeared out of history in hot pursuit of a cat.

‘’e were a good dog, that,’ said Martlow, regretfully.

XIV

Between the acting of a fearful thing

And the first motion, all the interim is

Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.

SHAKESPEARE

AFTER three days in the trenches the battalion was relieved, and moved to Courcelles, where they were to remain for one night on their way to rest-billets at Bus. The village had been heavily shelled from time to time, but had not been damaged to quite the same extent as Colincamps, which offered, on the crest of the hill, a more conspicuous target. Courcelles was uncovered at one end, but screened partially by rising ground on two sides. As Corporal Williams had said of Mailly-Maillet, it was simply lousy with guns. There was visible evidence on every side that the local farmers had reaped a bountiful harvest. Bourne, carrying messages between Colincamps and Courcelles, had noticed three haystacks in a picturesque group standing a little way back from the road. Then, one night, he saw a very faint gleam of light coming from inside one of them. It was a lucid explanation of the apparent fertility of the countryside. Monster guns, too, were secreted somehow in the courtyards of houses in the village itself. The Hun had his suspicions, and would explore the possibilities of the situation, rather too frequently, with high explosive.