Part 4 (1/2)

The mater rigged that girl out from top to toe, and paid her jolly well, too, and Van Drissel had the run of the house, and then went away with three boxes of the brigadier's cigars into the bargain. A German isn't a human being when you come to look at it--he's just a mean beast, a bully when he's top dog, and a grovelling worm when he's cornered. Does your crush take many prisoners, Dan?”

Dan Dunn smiled, and his faultless teeth gleamed in the coffee-brown of his face.

”Am I compelled to answer that question, your wors.h.i.+p?” he said, with an odd twinkle in his grey eyes, but he had already answered it to their complete satisfaction. ”Do you?” he said.

”A few Saxons now and again, when they put up their hands,” replied Captain Bob. ”They're sick to death of the whole business, but Prussians or Bavarians, no. We've 'had some,' and we're not looking for more trouble.”

Smithers made his appearance from the adjoining dug-out, which was their kitchen, and when Bob had fixed up the folding table and Dennis had dragged a Tate sugar box, which acted as cupboard, into the centre of the floor, they drank hot tea, which was good, and ate sardines and bread and b.u.t.ter, and finished up with jam, which Dan Dunn pa.s.sed with an apologetic grin.

”No, thanks; we had enough of that at Anzac,” he said. ”Forty flies to the spoonful and enteric to follow. Our boys put in a requisition for apricot so that you could see them better, but it didn't come off.”

After tea they smoked and talked over things, especially the new divisions that were marching up in a never-ending stream, and the huge sh.e.l.l stores at the artillery dumps, which had struck Dan Dunn very forcibly as his battalion pa.s.sed them. And then Bob, having duties to attend to, went away in the gathering dusk, and they hung a ground sheet over the door and lit a candle, and Dan, with his huge arms behind his head, told in his quiet drawl of Quinn's Post and Lone Pine, and had hard things to say about the Higher Command, to all of which Dennis listened, enthralled, with his elbows on his knees.

At five minutes to ten by the wristlet watch there came a cough from the other side of the ground sheet, and Dan picked himself up.

”Right-o, Hawke!” called Dennis, with a glance at the watch. ”Here's a spare revolver for you, Dan, or would you rather have a rifle?”

”Rifle's in the way if it's a long crawl,” said his cousin. ”I'll take the Smith and Wesson, old man.”

Dennis settled his cap firmly on his head and extinguished the candle.

On either side of the door of the dug-out, as they pulled aside the ground sheet and came up the steps, a dark figure loomed--Harry Hawke and his chum, Tiddler.

Against the lighter grey of the sky one could make out the ragged edge of the sandbags, and a little way off the rosy glow from a brazier showed through the trench mist which hung low over the ground.

”The listening post knows we're coming through 'em, sir; they're lying out in front of the bay on the left,” volunteered Hawke.

”Very well,” said Dennis in a low voice, ”the idea is this: we want to strike a bee-line--barring sh.e.l.l holes, of course--straight out to their wire. You and Tiddler will keep twenty yards behind to cover us if necessary, but no firing unless you are absolutely obliged. You understand that?”

Both men whispered ”Yus, sir!” in a ready chorus, and Dennis led the way to the bay in the trench, and climbed on to the fire step.

Another figure stood motionless there, his rifle on a sandbag before him, and everything was unusually still.

”Anything moving?” said Dennis, in the man's ear.

”Haven't known it so quiet all the week, sir,” was the reply. ”But don't forget there's a machine-gun yonder, thirty paces to the left of the willow stump, and they generally shove one of their posts out in front of that, sir.”

”I won't forget,” said Dennis. ”Come on, Dan! Over we go!” And the next moment four dark forms clambered across the parapet and dropped on to their faces on the other side.

A little way out, glued to the ground with their eyes and ears wide open, our listening post lay, and as they crawled towards it one of the men tapped with the toe of his boot to let them know that their coming had been heard.

A long way off to southward, so far that it came only as a dull booming, the German guns were sh.e.l.ling the French lines intermittently, and there was the sharp bark of rifles to the north.

”How long do you calculate it will take us to reach their wire, Baker?”

whispered Dennis to the last man of the listening post as he crawled up beside him.

”Somewhere about ten minutes, sir,” was the reply. ”There's one biggish crump-hole straight ahead, and two more on the left a bit farther on, and there's a tidy lot of dead lying out there.”

Shoulder to shoulder Dennis and Dan crept forward across that No Man's Land, the wind rustling in the tangled gra.s.s, bringing with it the acrid odour of unburied corpses. Dan's hand encountered one of them, and he nudged his cousin to work away more to the right.

This brought them to the edge of the first crump-hole, and glancing every few yards at the luminous dial, they kept on for some distance unchecked.