bootmaker, with a neck that you could have put through a napkin ring, a
tremendous forehead, and big, startled eyes. "Yes, we were put out there
to dig an outpost trench," he said. "The sergeant gave us a wrong
direction, I think. We took two days' rations and went out hundreds of
yards. No one came near us. There was firing on all sides, and we did
not know where we were. Our food was finished--we saw men working--we
did not know who they were--but they were English, and we were
captured."




CHAPTER XXI

ANGELS' WORK

_France, August 28th._


It had been a wild night. Not a first-rate full-dress attack on a big
front, but one of those fierce struggles on a small front which have
been so frequent in the stubborn fight northwards, up the Pozières Ridge
towards Mouquet Farm. Along a good part of the line the troops were back
in the trenches they had left, or had dug themselves a new trench only
slightly in advance of it. At other points they were in the trenches
they had gone out for.

The bombardment, which had been turned on as though somebody held the
key to the thunderstorm, and which had crashed and flashed into the
hill-side nearly all the night, had gradually died down. The artillery