strewn upon the ground. Stretcher-bearers were moving backwards and forwards as though their nerves were of steel. Officers were huddling their men together in places of uncertain sanctuary. Colonel Shaw, of the Canadian Mounted Rifles, directed eighty of his men to Cumberland dug-outs--a little shallow square. When it became too hot there, he forced them all out through a gap and bade them run for their lives. He himself refused to leave his wounded men, and remained there valiantly at his post until a shell struck him and he was killed.

Seventy yards from this spot was the dressing-station of the battalion. Here the medical officer in charge toiled unceasingly all through that terrible morning, the wounded coming to him, some crawling on hands and knees, by scores. Before the war Captain Haight was a jovial ship's surgeon on a steamer plying between Vancouver and Honolulu. He was a man of infinite courage--"nothing ever rattled him or upset his temper," said one survivor to me. When the dressing-station was shelled, he moved with his assistant, Lieutenant Atkinson, calmly and coolly to another on more exposed ground, and continued his humane work to the last, when he was dispatched by a bayonet in the most revolting manner.

Another officer, Captain Harper, who hailed from Kamsack, in distant Saskatchewan, was ministering to an officer and three desperately wounded men. He refused to leave them when the lull came and the Germans were seen advancing, although they urged him to do so. "I said I'd stand by you boys," he said, "and I will." A few minutes later and he, too, was gone.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the barrage, two battalions of desperate men were watching for a chance to cleave their way through to their comrades in peril. But there was little hope that any in the front line of trenches survived.

It was now ten minutes to one o'clock. After four hours' steady bombardment the storm of shell ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Forthright from the opposite trenches sprang a swarm of grey-coated Huns. They must have been firmly convinced that amidst those rugged, battered, seared, and bloody mounds and ditches, which four hours before had been the British trenches, not one single soul had escaped. Fully accoutred and with overcoats and full haversacks, they advanced in high spirits. Apart from a few bombers, not a man of those advancing hordes appears to have been in proper fighting trim. They came forward gaily, light-heartedly, as victors after a victory.

It was then the most wonderful thing of the day happened. Out of the earth there leapt a handful of wild-eyed soldiers, two officers amongst them, pale, muddied and reeking with sweat, who, running forward with upraised rifles and pistols, bade defiance to the oncoming foe. On they ran, and having discharged their weapons, flung them in the very faces of the Huns. Death was inevitable for these--the only surviving occupants of the British front line--and it was better to die thus, breathing defiance to a cowardly enemy, than be shot in a ditch and spitted through with a Hun bayonet. Thus they perished.

Few but the wounded fell into the hands of the enemy. A Toronto officer, himself in the very thick of the fight, and performing wonders of valour, told me that he had last seen General Mercer sitting dazed and wounded on the ground, just as the shell fire ceased and the Germans were advancing. Amongst the prisoners were General Williams and Colonel Ussher, both of whom were lying in a communication trench at "Vigo Street." General Williams was wounded in the face.

The cessation of fire was the signal for the Canadian supports to hasten forward to meet the enemy, who was now advancing in force and bringing up his machine-gunners and bombers. The battalion holding Maple Copse became planted firmly and refused to budge, and having dug itself in, held that position all day. Colonel Baker, M.P., of the Mounted Rifles, was unhappily hit by shell in the lungs, and died later in the day. The Princess Patricia's fought with their accustomed gallantry, led by the brave Colonel Buller, lately Military Secretary to H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, and helped, although at terrible cost, to check the further German advance.

Buller, his blood up, seeing his men giving way a little, ordered them to charge along a trench known as Gordon Road. They obeyed with a rush, and, not to impede their onset, Buller leapt up on to the edge of the trench and ran forward, crying: "On, boys, on! Break them to pieces!"

He was thus encouraging them when a bullet pierced his heart.

"I never saw a finer death," one man told me. "He looked very brave and handsome up there, outlined against the sky, the only figure on the bank above, his helmet off, and his face very pale and blazing with anger, and his right arm pointing forward. He fell down headlong, but we never turned back until we gave the Germans hell. Two hours later, I was told, the Colonel was still lying there on his face on the edge of the trench. Then they turned him over and brought him in."

The second-in-command of the Patricia's, Major Hamilton Gault, was severely wounded, and many gallant officers fell.

The machine-guns of the Royal Canadian Regiment inflicted fearful mortality. Between them and the Princess Patricia's was a gap, fifty yards wide, into which the Germans poured on finding it undefended, and were smashed on both flanks, and mowed down by scores. On their arrival at the "Appendix," only forty yards from the enemy's front trenches, they were met by a withering fire which almost obliterated them. A little further south they were more successful, and from the "Loop," where the company of the Princess Patricia's had perished, they penetrated to Gordon Road and beyond, and then commenced a fierce attack to the north. But here a swift and stern retribution was to be exacted from them.

A company commander, Captain Hugh Niven, who, although already twice wounded, was still full of valour and resolution, gathered the remainder of his men together, some seventy rifles in all and two machine-guns, and, hidden behind sandbags, awaited the foe in silence. The order was given: "Not a man must shoot until I give the signal!" Apparently the Boche was taken unawares. The volley which blazed forth was reminiscent of the immortal front rank fire of Lascelles' Regiment on the Heights at Quebec.

One stalwart French-Canadian, Arseneau by name, who had often faced wild animals in the backwoods, burning with ardour, could not be restrained from leaping up on the improvised parapet and repeatedly emptying his rifle, before the enemy could recover from his astonishment. His captain tells me that no fewer than eight Germans fell to this man's marksmanship alone in that swift encounter. When it was over, at least one hundred of the enemy slain lay on the ground. Afterwards the officer mentioned shepherded his men into a section of trench, he himself spending the whole of the ensuing night perambulating the trenches, directing defences, ministering to and encouraging and directing his men. It was truly an astonishing feat of physical endurance.

"We had lost so many," he said, "I felt I ought to be on deck as long as I could crawl." He was still giving orders when the stretcher-bearers lifted him out and bore him away to the field hospital.

A gallant youth in his twenty-fourth year was Captain Cotton, son of a Major-General, sometime Inspector-General of the Canadian Forces. Cotton was ordered to take two machine-guns and dig them in in such a manner in the front line that they would