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74 Generals or Huns, he did his shift without comment and, as far as could be seen, without thought.

"Where are you putting the earth?" asked the Sapper after watching for a while.

"Round corner, in a 'ole." The speaker pointed with his pipe, and the subject dropped.

The officer turned away smiling slightly, and decided on the inspection of the rum jar. The answer was clear and succinct, even if not couched in the language of the old army discipline. He inspected the hole, and, finding it was at the back of the trench, in a crater that was formed nightly by German minenwerfer, and that more earth there not only would not block the trench but, mirabile dicta, would be an actual advantage, he passed on and shortly came to a passage leading out of the front of the trench.

The passage was labelled Sap No. 130, and presented exactly the same appearance as the boyaux which ran out of the support line to the front trench. Only when one got into it did the difference become apparent, for whereas the boyaux had continued until finally opening into a new trench, the sap was a cul-de-sac, and finished abruptly in a little covered-in recess built into a miniature mountain of newly-thrown-up earth. And this great, tumbled mass of soil was the near lip of Vesuvius crater—blown up half way between the two front lines.

Over the top of the mountain there was no passage. A man standing or crawling there in daytime would have been in full view of German snipers at a range