He stood up, and then stooped to pull his trouser down over the top of his puttee, turning himself sideways with one arm outstretched, and glancing down, afterwards, to see that it hung straight and neat. Then he chucked out his chest, flinging his head back so that his chin seemed more aggressive, and swung out of the hut into the mist.

‘I’ll lay our artillery is puttin’ the bloody wind up them fuckin’ Fritzes,’ he said to Bourne over his shoulder, so that he failed to see Mr. Finch, who had returned. ‘If they haven’t got a suspish already, they’ll be wonderin’. … I beg pardon, sir, I didn’t see you was there.’

‘Shall we win, Sergeant?’ said Mr Finch, laughing.

‘Oh, we’ll win all right, sir,’ said Sergeant Tozer grimly, ‘but not yet.’

‘Sergeant, about those bombs,’ began Mr Finch, and Bourne, saluting, walked off to the signallers’ hut again.

They didn’t do much that night. Going into an estaminet early, they had a bottle of wine between them, and then strolled from one end of the town to the other. It was a long, straggling town, with a large civilian element, and chinks of light came between the blinds of the windows. On their way back to billets they turned into the Y.M.C.A. to get some cocoa. They did not feel like drinking bad wine or beer in a crowded and noisy estaminet, and argued that in any case they would have a rum ration that night. The Y.M.C.A., however, was as noisy and as crowded as the estaminet; and there was a good deal of clowning. One man was singing I want to go home:

‘Oh, my! I don’t want to die,

I want to go ’ome!’

dancing, as he sang, with a kind of waltz step. At the next table were three men smoking and talking, so close that above the murmuring din one heard snatches of their talk. Bourne ordered cocoa, and paid for it; and they talked a little to Weston, the attendant, who had been in the Westshires at one time. Then he left them, and they sat there, smoking. One of the men at the next table was talking to the other two.

‘“What’s the matter wi’ the girl?” the officer asked ’im. “I don’ know, sir,” said Sid, “she went into one o’ them out-’ouses wi’ Johnson; an’ the nex’ thing I ’eard was that Johnson ’ad gone for the doctor. Said she’d ’ad a fit.” – “Oh,” said the officer, “bloody tight fit, I suppose.”’

They all laughed, and Bourne looked at their sneering faces, and turned away again. He wanted to get out of all this senseless clamour; and as his eyes turned away, he chanced to see over the door a red strip on which was printed in white letters: ‘AND UNDERNEATH ARE THE EVERLASTING ARMS’. It struck him with an extraordinary vividness, that bare text sprawling across the wall above the clamour of those excited voices; and once again he knew that feeling of certitude in a peace so profound, that all the turmoil of the earth was lost in it.