The rain is coming down with tropical intensity. I am in a misty dream.
It's all so mysterious. Suddenly I fall over something--plonk into the
middle of some excavated earth, which the rain has made into semolina
pudding. Tiresome to be absent-minded. How it pours! Midnight.

The roots of the trees make it very difficult to dig tidily, but the men
use their "billucks" with the unerring skill of farmers, and their
spades and picks as you or I would use a pencil. Time goes on. The
trench must be done before 2.30 a.m. We have to be gone before dawn. It
is nearly done now. Half-past twelve. The rain is stopping. One o'clock.
No, it isn't. It's coming down again. Half-past one. The trench is
finished. We must cover up all signs of it with branches, lest the wily
Taube should see, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.

A quarter to two.

[Sidenote: A STRAFE]

Suddenly crash! bang! clash! boom! bang! We almost jump out of our
skins. Where the deuce were all those guns hidden? From all about us,
and far away behind and on either flank, our guns have begun strafing.
The most hideous and deafening din.

The ground seems to shake. Then an order comes that we are to clear out
at once. We do so. The Boches haven't answered yet, but they will. The
whole thing seems quite unreal. The men vastly entertained. I honestly
felt as if I were at some exciting melodrama. The least cessation of the
guns, and I found myself saying: "Don't stop! don't stop!" I shouted
into Corporal Nutley's car: "Can you hear what I'm saying?" and he