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We took the train for Calais and crossed the Channel to Dover. This time the eccentric strip of water was as calm as a pond at sunset. No jumpy, white-capped billows, no flying spray, no seasick passengers. Tarpaulins were a drag on the market. "I wouldn't believe," declared Hephzy, "that this lookin'-glass was the same as that churned-up tub of suds we slopped through before.

The coats of some French soldiers, blown up long ago by some of these mines, looked like the blue of the chicory flower growing in the churned-up soil... The new mine was not fired that afternoon, up to the time of my going away. But it was fired next day, and I wondered whether the gloomy boy had gone up with it. There was a foreknowledge of death in his eyes.

There was a drift lower down. It was all the goaded, worn-out oxen could do to stay the huge creaking waggons down the steep bank, and drag them over the river-bed of sand and boulders, through the muddied, churned-up water that they were dying for, yet not allowed to taste, and toil with them up the farther side. The Englishman was not cruel.

But they were not missed then by those who went on in waves rather, like molecules, separating, collecting, splitting up into smaller groups, bunching together again, on the way to the first line of German trenches. A glint of bayonets made a quickset hedge along the line of churned-up earth which had been the Germans' front line trench. Our guns had cut the wire or torn gaps into it.

They should have advanced in waves, but that was impossible over the shell-cratered ground, as the going over the churned-up earth was very difficult, particularly in view of the heavy loads the men carried. All cohesion was soon lost, and the men sauntered forward in little groups endeavouring as best they could to keep the proper direction. No one knew what was happening.

From that position she poured a rapid hail of shells into the dock, which was instantly transformed into a cavity vomiting green flame and fragments of iron and human bodies. In five minutes nothing was left of the dock or its contents but a churned-up swamp of muddy water and shattered stonework.

"There were good reasons for Lawrence's not writing home and they made it awkward for us to write to him for a time. You can now tell us what he has done in Canada. We want to know." Foster began with some hesitation by relating how he had first met his comrade in the churned-up mud outside a logging camp after a dispute with the bullying manager.

Everything about her displeased him; her painted face, and her churned-up curls, and her hoarsely-mellifluous voice, her shrill laugh, her way of rolling up her eyes, her too décolleté bodice and those plump, shiny fingers with a multitude of rings!... Slinking off into a corner, he now swiftly ran his eyes over the faces of all the guests, as though he did not even distinguish one from another; again he stared persistently at his own feet.

Half-way across the gulf the sirocco lulled; the sail was lowered, and we had to make the rest of the passage by rowing. Under the lee of Ischia we got into comparatively quiet water; though here the beautiful Italian sea was yellowish green with churned-up sand, like an unripe orange.

But instead of freshening, the wind, which was making the leaves quiver ashore, seemed to be growing fainter and fainter as they came nearer to the thundering falls, for it was plain enough that in spite of all their efforts the current was the stronger, and that it was only a question of time before the pulling of the men would become weaker and the boat would be drawn right on and on into the churned-up foaming water, and then