It is a very funny feeling I experience in returning to these pages. I had left them since the first of May, when I wrote the last words of Chapter XI., and you will have noticed that several points remained unsolved. In this state my MS. had rested during six weeks, mostly because I did not know how to fill the gaps. But since yesterday things having changed, Fate with a capital F has added another chapter to my story.
You must know that we are getting ready for a great attack. As far as we can ascertain we are going in a few days to leave the trenches where we have been living cosily for so many months. Of course, you wonder; feeling snug in the trenches is somewhat unexpected. Yet it is true. And now the unceasing bombardment tells us: "We shall have to be going." Can you believe that it fills us with a sort of regret?
Yesterday at noon Charlie calls Cotton, Pringle, and me.
"My boys," he says, "the colonel has just had a bit of a chat with me. He wants four volunteers—three men and me—to go to-night and reconnoitre a certain place. I have thought of you three, but I had better tell you: it's not without danger, far from it."
"We're here," says I, "to do our duty."
"We'll have some fun, anyhow," declares Pringle.
And Guncotton adds:
"My manuscript is safely in London. I don't care."
I record this conventicle lest you should think that such resolutions are taken as in opera, where the four men would advance to each other and, uniting their four right handy in one single grip, sing a quartette.