CHAPTER III

THE NIGHT ATTACK

"Snatching up their rifles the three men hurried from the dug-out, nearly colliding with the rest of their chums who were returning at the first alarm to get their equipment. "Follow me," exclaimed Penfold. "Keep well down."

Snatching

At the fifth or sixth step along the tortuous communication trench Setley trod on something not so yielding as mud, but comparatively soft. He stooped and felt the object with his hand. His fingers came in contact with a human face.

"There's a man lying here!" he called out to Penfold, who was a few paces in front.

"I know," replied his new chum. "He's been there for the last three hours. Our fellows haven't had time to bring him in yet. Don't worry about that; you'll soon get used to it."

Setley hurried on, wondering whether he would ever get accustomed to the horrors of the trenches. The seemingly stony indifference with which Penfold had spoken jarred on his sensitive nerves. Somehow the realization did not fit in with the anticipation of what war really was. He could not help asking himself why nations should set about to deliberately exterminate each other merely for the lust of conquest—a wholesale slaughter by the most deadly scientific instrument that human ingenuity could devise.

His disjointed reveries were interrupted by Penfold being hurled violently backwards, his hunched shoulders striking Ralph violently in the chest. The two men staggered backwards, accompanied by showers of mud, stones, and displaced sand-bags, all silhouetted against the glare of an exploding shell. Three of the Wheatshires preceding Penfold were hurled bodily into the air, subsiding with sickening thuds upon the soft ground. One writhed furiously, groaning dismally the while; the others were mere lumps of clay fashioned in God's own image, but now hideously mangled.

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