three rockets had gone up.

He stood by for an hour with no result, then sought his bunk once
more, cursing all men. Confound the Infantry getting the jumps over
a rocket or two! Confound them two times! Then a spark of inspiration
glowed within him, glowed and flamed brightly. If his exalted _poilus_
got the wind up over a handful of rockets, how much more also would
the deteriorating Boche?

Gurgling happily, he brushed the rats off his chest and the beetles
off his face, turned over and went to sleep. Next morning he wrote
a letter to his "god-mother" in Paris ("_une petite femme, très
intelligente, vous savez_"), and ten days later her parcels came
tumbling in. The first night (a Monday) he gave a modest display,
red and white rockets bursting into green stars every five minutes.
Tuesday night more rockets, with a few Catherine-wheels thrown in.
Wednesday night, Catherine-wheels and golden rain, and so on until the
end of the week, when they finished up with a grand special attraction
and all-star programme, squibs, Catherine-wheels, Roman candles,
Prince of Wales' feathers, terminating in a blinding, fizzing barrage
of coloured rockets, and "God bless our Home" in golden stars.

"All very pretty," said I, "but what were the results?"

"Precisely what I anticipated. A deserter came over yesterday who was
through it all and didn't intend to go through it again. They had got
the wind up properly, he said, hadn't had a wink of sleep for a week.
His officers had scratched themselves bald-headed trying to guess what
it was all about. All ranks stood to continuously, up to their waists
in mud, frozen stiff and half drowned, while _my_ brave little rogues