a highly civilised community. Some traces of their aboriginal state they
still retain, and they cherish their totem, which is a bundle of black
ribbons, rather like the flattened leaves of an artichoke, attached to
the back of their collars. It is the badge of their tribe. Also at night
some of them develop the most primitive of all instincts and crawl out
on their stomachs with a hand-grenade to get as near as may be to the
enemy's listening posts and taste the joy of killing. But by day they
are as demure and sleepy as the tortoiseshell cat which has taken up its
quarters in the dug-out.

Such is their life. But they are quietly preparing to get a move on.
Some R.G.A. men have arrived with four pretty toys from Vickers's, and
one fine morning they are going to disturb those sand-bags opposite them
with a battery of trench mortars; our field guns will draw a curtain of
shrapnel in front of the German support trenches, and then they will
satisfy their curiosity as to what is behind those inscrutable
sand-bags.




IX

STOKES'S ACT

An offender when in arrest is not to bear arms except by order of
his C.O. or in an emergency.--_The King's Regulations._


I