Fitzgerald, alone and astray, had no definite idea of his position; he only knew that he was lost at the cross-trenches and did not know which trench led to safety. Perhaps he had passed beyond the British front. He peered over the top. The night was quiet, scarcely a rifle spoke, though many star shells were ablaze in the heavens and dropping petals of flame to the dark earth.... Right in front of Fitzgerald was a ghastly heap, jumbled and confused, a heap of dead men. And round this heap lay other dead things, rejected from the more composite and bulky distortion of war. The solitary figures lay—some face downwards, arms spread out, others curled up like sleeping dogs.
"Well, where am I?" asked Fitzgerald. "Whose starshell is that, ours or theirs?... Where's our line?"
He looked at a dead thing near him and shuddered. Then, shouldering his rifle, he made his way up the trench on his right.
"This is all right!" he muttered, passing a projecting beam of a fallen dug-out. "I passed this a minute ago ... but not this."
He detached himself awkwardly from the heap of limp bodies into which he had fallen and hurriedly retraced his steps to the junction where the dark trenches opened up to unknown mysteries.
Fitzgerald leant wearily against the wall and puzzled over many things.
"If I go over the top, what happens?" he asked himself. "Run into a German patrol, maybe, or into one of our own covering parties and they'll shoot me on sight. If I go along a trench, I'll probably get into the German lines. That won't do, either. I'm like a rat in a trap.... But I must get out of it. Yes, I must get out of it.... But how?"
The question caused a queer sensation to run down the innermost parts of his body and the sensation was one of fear. He mumbled many things to himself in a thick, quick undertone. Then, without realising the risks he ran, Fitzgerald crawled over the parapet and went out into the open, taking his rifle with him.
It was a man lying face downwards on the ground that attracted his attention first. He could have sworn that the man moved and brought a rifle to bear upon him. Fitzgerald stood upright and fired at the man twice, only to find that he was riddling a corpse with bullets. He flung himself flat to avoid the machine gun that opened fire and waited till it ceased its play. A galaxy of starshells lit up the heavens and a big shell of another pattern whirled across the open and burst with a dizzy clatter. In the distance could be heard the transports of war clattering along the roads, the clank of rails unleaded at some far-off railway siding, and gleaming luridly against the darkness could be seen the flames of a building on fire some dozen miles away. Near Fitzgerald lay a dead man, further off another, looking like an empty sack flung on the ground.
The maxim fire stammered into silence and the youth got to his feet, looked round and listened with strained ears. Somewhere near he could hear the sound of hammers and the creaking of shovels and he concluded that a working party was busy at its toil. It was impossible to determine to what side the party belonged. It might be German. The lines of trenches were very confused and salients projected out like ducks' bills in places, and at other points they receded some five hundred yards from the opposite front. No man was ever more solitary than poor, mud-stained Rifleman Fitzgerald at that moment.