CHAPTER XXIV
The Château at the Trench End
The wake of the battalion was marked at every stride by enemy dead and wounded, and when Wetherby overtook them he found them bayoneting and bombing their way along a zigzag trench, and Harry Hawke in the act of scoring "2/12th R.R." on the shield of a captured machine-gun with the point of his dripping weapon.
"Where is Mr. Dashwood?" cried young Wetherby.
"Straight ahead, sir. 'Follow the tram-lines,' and you can't miss him!" And Harry Hawke pointed with a grin to the zigzag trench.
They ran together along the broken parapet as the explosion of the hand bombs suddenly ceased, and from the way the battalion was crowded in the trench below them with a goodly assortment of unwounded prisoners, progress seemed to have been checked for a moment.
Stumbling over bodies, and every now and then getting entangled among strands of broken wire; blundering down into some trench-mortar hole and up again at the other side, Wetherby and Hawke at length came upon Bob Dashwood and Dennis, where the trench ended abruptly without any apparent rhyme or reason.