As soon as they were full, I placed them on my shoulders; rose, dripping, from the water; and made for our line. I had not gone more than twenty paces when a bullet struck close at my heels. I jumped and looked upward, hoping to fool the sniper into thinking he was firing too high, causing him to set his sight for a shorter range. The next shot fell shorter still. I looked up again and hastened my pace. A third shot visibly struck a rock and enabled the sniper to correct his range.
Almost immediately after came another bullet, which I knew had got something about me. Instantly I flopped down and lay still. There was more scattered firing from the German lines and I was trembling with “nerves.”
At last, I could not stand it longer. I was afraid the sniper would fire at me again—not an uncommon practice with the boche sniper, who, when he drops his man, usually sends over a make-sure shot. So I sprang to my feet and rushed for the trenches, arriving there in safety.
When I got into our section I found my pals sitting around and looking very gloomy. Upon seeing me they greeted me with:
“Ye’ve been a h—— o’ a time awa’. We were juist beginnin’ tae think we’d lost our watter bottles.”
When I unloaded my cargo I found that two of the bottles had been pierced by a bullet. Each man of the section made a thirsty effort to lay hands on his own bottle. I was left with the two damaged ones besides my own. Then they told me how a shell had exploded and killed two of the card players—the owners of the damaged bottles. The water that was left in these was distributed among the others.
Patrol work, mostly at night, continued to be my chief duty. On one occasion I lost my bearings, and presently found myself almost upon one of the boche listening posts.
“So long as I have come thus far, I will edge in and take a chance,” I said to myself.
I knew it would be almost as dangerous to go back as to go forward, for at any moment a man might crane his neck above the parapet, see me moving, and fire. Then there was the momentary chance that a star bomb would light the heavens and all the earth between the lines, in which case a thousand rifles would begin sputtering at everything that moved or seemed to be alive. Each second I expected it to come. My nerves felt as if they were drawn taut—taut as the barbed wire which the boches string so tight that if it is cut in the night it will twang like the string of a violin. But the quick shot in the night did not come, and I wriggled forward through the wire.
I was almost at the edge of the parapet of the listening post. I heard voices whispering in German. Some one was scrambling up over the parapet. How was I to get away? I could not, so I lay on my belly and buried my face in the earth—the earth which should be wholesome and life giving, but which stunk with unspeakable things.