From inquiries and personal observation I found that the cause of the
tide rising was the fact that the Engineers had been draining the
trench, in the course of which process they had apparently struck a
spring of water.

We accepted the cause of the disaster philosophically, and immediately
discussed what was the best thing to be done. Action of some sort was
urgently necessary, as at present we were all sitting on the top of the
mud bank of the ditch in the silent, steady rain, the whole party being
occasionally illuminated by a German star shell--more like a family
sitting for a flashlight photograph than anything else.

We decided to make a dam. Having found an empty ration box and half a
bag of coke, we started on the job of trying to fence off the water from
our cave. After about an hour's struggle with the elements we at last
succeeded, with the aid of the ration box, the sack of coke and a few
tins of bully, in reducing the water level inside to six inches.

Here we were, now wetter than ever, cold as Polar bears, sitting in this
hygroscopic catacomb at about 2 a.m. We longed for a fire; a fire was
decided on. We had a fire bucket--it had started life as a biscuit
tin--a few bits of damp wood, but no coke. "We had some coke, I'm sure!
Why, of course--we built it into the dam!" Down came the dam, out came
the coke, and in came the water. However, we preferred the water to the
cold; so, finally, after many exasperating efforts, we got a fire going
in the bucket. Five minutes' bliss followed by disaster. The fire bucket
proceeded to emit such dense volumes of sulphurous smoke that in a few
moments we couldn't see a lighted match.

We stuck it a short time longer, then one by one dived into the water