Sergeant Snogger, who had been marching in front, came back and kept in step with Bowdy Benners and his mates.
"The French lost 'The Pimple' last night," he said. "There were two thousand 'oldin' the place and the Germans turned every damned gun they'd got on it. Blew it to blazes, they did. Not one Frenchman came back; and they say none was taken prisoners. They were damned unlucky."
Half-an-hour's march brought the men to a little village, broken, ruined, untenanted. There they halted while the officers inspected the cellars, seeking shelter where their men might sleep. Snogger's friends were lucky and found a cellar, the floor of which was littered with hay, and here they lay down, but not before they lit a candle to frighten the rats away. Holding himself erect, Snogger tried to unbuckle his equipment, but his fingers were unable to perform the task. "Damn it!" he shouted in a petulant voice and collapsed in a heap on the straw where he lay crumpled up. He might have been hit in the head by a bullet so sudden was his fall.
The men lay near the bottom of the cellar stairs; the apartment lost itself in unfathomable corners, and there the rats were scurrying backwards and forwards. Bowdy was just dropping off to sleep when a hoarse sepulchral yell echoed through the cellar and a strange unearthly figure rushed into the circle of candle-light, waving his arms in the air and shouting in a strange incoherent voice. The men were looking at a French soldier.
He came to a halt at the foot of the stairs; his eyelids slowly opened, the eyes took in the apartment—the dim candle, the forms lying on the floor.
"Who are you?" he asked in a steady voice. Then as if collecting his scattered wits he muttered: "You are billeted here. I have just come down from the 'Pimple'.... I'm the only man left.... Who has a drop of water to spare?"
Thus did Fitzgerald, who woke up, translate the man's remarks. Bowdy gave him a drink of water. He lay down again in one of the men's overcoats and was soon asleep. As the men dozed off one by one the rats drew closer, peering curiously out from the darkness of the remote corners of the cellar.... Fitzgerald fell asleep to awake suddenly with a start. A rat had run over his face.
"The damned pests," he muttered getting to his feet. "I can't stand them. I'll get outside and sleep on the ground. God! it's strange how a little thing like a rat disturbs me," he muttered.
He went outside, lay down on the cobbles and slept the sleep of a weary man.
In the evening the battalion marched away from the neighbourhood of Souchez and entered the Loos Salient just in time for the Christmas season.