Once every hour or so we were allowed to lie down on the ground and rest for a few minutes. I used to appreciate this repose keenly, and became quite a connoisseur in earth-couches. I found that the best way to rest was to lie athwart the furrows, my hips in one hollow and my heels in another, the back of my head resting on one ridge and my legs bending at the knees over a second. I used to become so comfortable in this luxurious position that I always fell fast asleep the moment I assumed it, but, luckily, "the man in the 'bashleek'" always woke me up promptly, so that I never had time to get frozen. Despite their extreme fatigue, the soldiers did not like these pauses, for the intense silence horrified them. The men held their breath, so that I fancied I could hear my heart beating. Once, a dog howled dismally in a distant village.
I noticed that we passed through four different kinds of country, first flat country over which a gigantic steam-roller seemed to have just passed, levelling everything, and leaving behind it naught but wounded men, dead horses, and broken carts; then flat, culti-
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vated land in which we had to cross the furrows; then flat cultivated land in which we walked along the furrows; and, lastly, grassy and slightly hilly country.
These furrows were frozen as hard as marble, and walking athwart them was worse than marching with peas in your boots, for they were not far enough apart for a single stride, and, as they were invisible in the darkness, one frequently came a " cropper." Every now and then a big soldier would come down with a thud, and a rattle of accoutrements that sounded like the fall of a harnessed dray-horse. It was like walking the treadmill, it was like tugging the oar in a Moroccan galley; but by-and-by I became used to it, just as I could, I suppose, become used to picking oakum, and plodded on stolidly and mechanically. It seemed as if I had been all my life engaged in this sort of work. I tried, but unsuccessfully, to imagine that at that very moment people were sitting down to recherchd dinners in the Carlton, buying " extra specials" in the Strand, and laying down the law about the battle in the clubs. It was hard to realise that some parts of the world were bored by the whole proceedings, but whenever I brought my mind to bear on this problem I missed a furrow and went headlong to the earth. Walking down these furrows was also very tiresome, as they were just a shade too narrow. The hilly country in which we found ourselves before dawn next morning was not much better than that which we had traversed during the night, as it contained unexpected gullies and stumps of trees.