“Eight o’clock.”
It was a quarter to already.
In the dug-out I was emptying my pockets, taking off my equipment, and putting on a cap-comforter. I had my compass with me, and put it in my pocket. I looked on the map and saw that the sap was practically due north of the Quarry. And I took a nip of brandy out of my flask. Will had gone to arrange with Captain Robertson about warning the sentries. I was alone, and still cursing myself for this unnecessary adventure. When I was ready, I stodged up 76 Street to the Quarry. It was certainly a good night, very black.
When I saw Will and Captain Robertson together on the fire-step peering over, I felt rather bucked with myself. Hitherto I had felt like an enthusiastic bather undressing, nearly everyone else having decided it was not warm enough to bathe; now it was as if I suddenly found that they were watching me as I ran down the beach, and I no longer repented of my resolution. Next moment I was climbing up on to the slimy sandbag wall, and dropping over the other side. I was surprised to find there was very little drop at all. There was an old ditch to be crossed, and then we came to our wire, which was very thin at this point. While Will was cursing, and making, it seemed to me, rather an unnecessary rattling and shaking of the wire (you know how wire reverberates if you hit a fence by the road), I looked back at our own parapet. I felt it would be a good thing to see on one’s return; again, it struck me how low it was, regarded from this side; I saw a head move along the top of it. This made me jump. Already our trench seemed immeasurably far off.
I looked in front again, as the noise of Will’s wire-rattling had ceased. In fact he was clean out of sight. This made me jump again, and I hurried on. It was “knife-rest” wire (see next page).
I stepped over it, and my foot came down on to more wire, which rattled with a noise that made me stand stock still awaiting something to happen. I felt like a cat who has upset a tablecloth and all the tea things. I stood appalled at the unexpected clatter. But really it was hardly audible to our sentries, much less to the Germans at least a hundred and twenty yards away.
At last I got through and flopped down. Immediately Will’s form showed up dark in front of me. When I was standing up, I had been unable to see him against the black ground. We lay about a minute absolutely quiet, according to arrangement.
I had fairly made the plunge now, and I felt like the bather shaking his hair as he comes up for the first time, and shouting out how glorious it is. I was elated. The feel of the wet grass was good under my hands; the silence was good; the immense loneliness, save for Will’s black form, was good; and a slight rustle of wind in the grass was good also. I just wanted to lie, and enjoy it. I hoped Will would not go on for another minute. But soon he began to crawl.
Have you done much crawling? It is slow work. You take knee-steps, and they are not like footsteps: they are not a hundred and twenty to the hundred yards They are more like fifty to ten yards, I should think. Anyway it seemed endless. The end of the sap was, to be precise, just one hundred and twenty-five yards from our front trench. Yet when I had gone, I suppose, forty yards, I expected to be on it any minute. Will must be going wrong. I thought of the map. Could we be going north-east instead of north? Will halted. I nearly bumped into his right foot, which raised itself twice, signalling a halt. I took out my compass, and looked at it. I shaded it with my hand, the luminous arrow seemed so bright: “rather absurd,” I thought immediately, “as if the Boches could possibly see it from the trench.” But we were going straight enough. Then the figure in front moved on, and I came up to where he had halted. It was the edge of a big shell-hole, full of water; I put my left hand in up to the wrist, I don’t know why.