within the area over which he calculated the illumination would expose
him. The instant the last flicker of the third light died out, he
leaped to his feet, and made a rush. The lights had shown him a scanty
few rows of barbed wire between him and the crater; he had reckoned
roughly the number of steps to it and counted as he ran, then more
cautiously pushed on, feeling for the wire, found it, threw himself
down, and began to wriggle desperately underneath. When he thought he
was through the last, he rose; but he had miscalculated, and the first
step brought his thighs in scratching contact with another wire. His
heart was in his mouth, for some seconds had passed since the last
light had died and he knew that another one must flare up at any
instant. Sweeping his arm downward and forward, he could feel no wire
higher than the one-which had pricked his legs. There was no time now
to fiddle about avoiding tears and scratches. He swung over the wire,
first one leg, then another, felt his mackintosh catch, dragged it free
with a screech of ripping cloth that brought his heart to his mouth,
turned and rushed again for the crater. As he ran, first one light,
then another, soared upwards and broke out into balls of vivid white
light that showed the crater within a dozen steps. It was no time for
caution, and everything depended on the blind luck of whether a German
lookout had his eyes on that spot at that moment. Without hesitation,
he continued his rush to the foot of the mound on the crater's edge,
hurled himself down on it and lay panting and straining his ears for
the sounds of shots and whistling bullets that would tell him he was
discovered. But the lights flared and burned out, leaped afresh and
died out again, and there was no sign that he had been seen. For the
moment he felt reasonably secure. The earth on the crater's rim was
broken and irregular, the surface an eye-deceiving patchwork of broken
light and black heavy shadow under the glare of the flying lights. The
mackintosh he wore was caked and plastered with mud, and blended well
with the background on which he lay. He took care to keep his arms in,
to sink his head well into his rounded shoulders, to curl his feet and
legs up under the skirt of his mackintosh, knowing well from his own
experience that where the outline of a body is vague and easily escapes
notice, a head or an arm, or especially and particularly a booted foot
and leg, will stand out glaringly distinct. As he lay, he placed his
ear to the muddy ground, but could hear no sound of mining operations
beneath him. Foot by foot he hitched himself upward to the rim of the
crater's edge, and again lay and listened for thrilling long-drawn
minute after minute.

Suddenly his heart jumped and his flesh went cold. Unmistakingly he
heard the scuffle and swish of footsteps on the wet ground, the murmur
of voices apparently within a yard or two of his head. There were men
in the mine-crater, and, from the sound of their movements, they were
creeping out on a patrol similar to his own, perhaps, and, as near as
he could judge, on a line that would bring them directly on top of him.
The scuffing passed slowly in front of him and for a few yards along
the inside of the crater. The sound of the murmuring voices passed
suddenly from confused dullness to a sharp clearer-edged speech,
telling Ainsley, as plainly as if he could see, that the speaker had
risen from behind the sound-deadening ridge of earth and was looking
clear over its top, Ainsley lay as still as one of the clods of earth
about him, lay scarcely daring to breathe, and with his skin pringling.
There was a pause that may have been seconds, but that felt like hours.
He did not dare move his head to look; he could only wait in an agony
of apprehension with his flesh shrinking from the blow of a bullet that
he knew would be the first announcement of his discovery. But the
stillness was unbroken, and presently, to his infinite relief, he heard
again the guttural voices and the sliding footsteps pass back across
his front, and gradually diminish. But he would not let his impatience
risk the success of his enterprise; he lay without moving a muscle for
many long and nervous minutes. At last he began to hitch himself
slowly, an inch at a time, along the edge of the crater away from the
point to which the German lookout had moved. He halted and lay still
again when his ear caught a fresh murmur of guttural voices, the
trampling of many footsteps, and once or twice the low but clear clink
of an iron tool in the crater beneath him.

It seemed fairly certain that the Germans were occupying the crater,
were either making it the starting-point of a mine tunnel, or were
fortifying it as a defensive point. But it was not enough to surmise
these things; he must make sure, and, if possible, bomb the working
party or the entrance to the mine tunnel. He continued to work his way
along the rim of the crater's edge. Arrived at a position where he
expected to be able to see the likeliest point of the crater for a mine
working to commence, he took the final and greatest chance. Moving only
in the intervals of darkness between the lights, he dragged the
mackintosh up on his shoulders until the edge of its deep collar came
above the top of his head, opened the throat and spread it wide to
disguise any outline of his head and neck, found a suitable hollow on
the edge of the ridge, and boldly thrust his head over to look
downwards into the hole.

When the next light flared, he found that he could see the opposite
wall and perhaps a third of the bottom of the hole, with the head and
shoulders of two or three men moving about it. When the light died, he
hitched forward and again lay still. This time the light showed him
what he had come to seek: the black opening of a tunnel mouth in the
wall of the crater nearest the British line, a dozen men busily engaged
dragging sacks-full of earth from the opening, and emptying them
outside the shaft. He waited while several lights burned, marking as
carefully as possible the outline of the ridge immediately above the
mine shaft, endeavoring to pick a mark that would locate its position
from above it. It had begun to rain in a thin drizzling mist, and
although this obscured the outline of the crater to some extent, its
edge stood out well against the glow of such lights as were thrown up
from the British side.

It was now well after midnight, and the firing on both sides had
slackened considerably, although there was still an irregular rattle of
rifle fire, the distant boom of a gun and the scream of its shell
passing overhead. A good deal emboldened by his freedom from discovery
and by the misty rain, Ainsley slid backwards, moved round the crater,
crept back to the barbed wire and under it, ran across the opening on
the other side and dropped into the hole where he had left his men. He
found them waiting patiently, stretched full length in the wet
discomfort of the soaking ground, but enduring it philosophically and
concerned, apparently, only for his welfare.

His sergeant puffed a huge sigh of relief at his return. "I was just
about beginning to think you had 'gone west,' sir," he said, "and
wondering whether I oughtn't to come and 'ave a look for you."

Ainsley explained what had happened and what he had seen. "I'm going
back, and I want you all to come with me," he said. "I'm going to shove
every bomb we've got down that mine shaft. If we meet with any luck, we
should wreck it up pretty well."

"I suppose, sir," said the sergeant, "if we can plant a bomb or two in
the right spot, it will bottle up any Germans working inside?"

"Sure to!" said Ainsley. "It will cave in the entrance completely; and
then as soon as we get back, we'll give the gunners the tip, and leave
them to keep on lobbing some shells in and breaking up any attempt to
reopen the shaft and dig out the mining party."

"Billy!" said one of the men, in an audible aside, "don't you wish you
was a merry little German down that blinkin' tunnel, to-night!"

"Imphim," answered Billy, "I don't think!"

Ainsley explained his plan of campaign, saw that everything was in
readiness, and led his party out. The misty rain was still falling,
and, counting on this to hide them sufficiently from observation if
they lay still while any lights were burning, they crawled rapidly
across the open, wriggled underneath the wires, cut one or two of
them--especially any which were low enough to interfere with free
movement under them--and crawled along to the crater.

Ainsley left the party sprawling flat at the foot of the rim, while he
crept up to locate the position over the mine shaft. Each man had
brought about a dozen small bombs and one large one packed with high
explosive. Before leaving the ditch, on Ainsley's directions, each man
tied his own lot in one bundle, bringing the ends of the fuses together
and tying them securely with their ends as nearly as possible level, so
that they could be lit at the same time. Each man had with him one of
those tinder pipe-lighters which are ignited by the sparks of a little
twirled wheel. When Ainsley had placed the men on the edge of the
crater, he gave the word, and each man lit his tinder, holding it so as
to be sheltered from sight from the German trench, behind the flap of
his mackintosh. Then each took a separate piece of fuse about a foot
long, and, at a whispered word from Ainsley, pressed the end into the
glowing tinder. Almost at the same instant the four fuses began to
burn, throwing out a fizzing jet of sparks. Each man knew that, shelter
them as they would from observation, the sparks were almost certain to
betray them; but although some rifles began at once to crack
spasmodically and the bullets to whistle overhead, each man went on
with the allotted program steadily, without haste and without fluster,
devoting all their attention to the proper igniting of the bomb-fuses,
and leaving what might follow to take care of itself. As his length of
fuse caught, each man said "Ready" in a low tone; Ainsley immediately
said "Light!" and each instantly directed the jet of sparks as from a
tiny hose into the tied bundle of the bomb-fuses' ends. The instant
each man saw his own bundle well ignited, he reported "Lit!" and thrust
the fuse ends well into the soft mud. Being so waterproofed as to burn
if necessary completely under water, this made no difference to the
fuses, except that it smothered the sparks and showed only a curling
smoke-wreath. But the first sparks had evidently been seen, for the
bomb party heard shoutings and a rapidly increasing fire from the
German lines. A light flamed upward near the mine-crater. Ainsley said,
"Now!--, and take good aim." The men scrambled to their knees and,
leaning well over until they could see the black entrance of the mine
shaft, tossed their bundles of bombs as nearly as they could into and
around it. In the pit below, Ainsley had a momentary glimpse of half a
dozen faces, gleaming white in the strong light, upturned, and staring
at him; from somewhere down there a pistol snapped twice, and the
bullets hissed past over their heads. The party ducked back below the
ridge of earth, and as a rattle of rifle fire commenced to break out
along the whole length of the German line, they lit from their tinder
the fuses of a couple of bombs specially reserved for the purpose, and
tossed them as nearly as they could into the German trench, a score of
paces away. Their fuses being cut much shorter than the others, the
bombs exploded almost instantly, and Ainsley and his party leapt down
to the level ground and raced across to the wire.

By now the whole line had caught the alarm; the rifle fire had swelled
to a crackling roar, the bullets were whistling and storming across the
open. In desperate haste they threw themselves down and wriggled under
the wire, and as they did so they felt the earth beneath them jar and
quiver, heard a double and triple roar from behind them, saw the wet
ground in front of them and the wires overhead glow for an instant with
rosy light as the fire of the explosion flamed upwards from the crater.

At the crashing blast of the discharge, the rifle fire was hushed for a
moment; Ainsley saw the chance and shouted to his men, and, as they
scrambled clear of the wire, they jumped to their feet, rushed back
over the flat, and dropped panting in the shelter of the ditch. The
rifle fire opened again more heavily than ever, and the bullets were
hailing and splashing and thudding into the wet earth around them, but
the bank protected them well, and they took the fullest advantage of
its cover. Because the depression they were in shallowed and afforded
less cover as it ran towards the British lines, it was safer for the
party to stay where they were until the fire slackened enough to give
them a fair sporting chance of crawling back in safety.

They lay there for fully two hours before Ainsley considered it safe
enough to move. They were, of course, long since wet through, and by
now were chilled and numbed to the bone. Two of the men had been
wounded, but only very slightly in clean flesh wounds: one through the
arm and one in the flesh over the upper ribs. Ainsley himself bandaged
both men as well as he could in the darkness and the cramped position
necessary to keep below the level of the flying ballets, and both men,
when he had finished, assured him that they were quite comfortable and
entirely free from pain. Ainsley doubted this, and because of it was
the more impatient to get back to their own lines; but he restrained
his impatience, lest it should result in any of his party suffering
another and more serious wound. At last the rifle fire had died down to
about the normal night rate, had indeed dropped at the finish so
rapidly in the space of two or three minutes that Ainsley concluded
fresh orders for the slower rate must have been passed along the German
lines. He gave the word, and they began to creep slowly back, moving
again only when no lights were burning.

There were some gaspings and groanings as the men commenced to move
their stiffened limbs.

"I never knew," gasped one, "as I'd so many joints in my backbone, and
that each one of them could hold so many aches."

"Same like!" said another. "If you'll listen, you can hear my knees and
hips creaking like the rusty hinges of an old barn-door."

Although the men spoke in low tones, Ainsley whispered a stern command
for silence.

"We're not so far away," he said, "but that a voice might carry; and
you can bet they're jumpy enough for the rest of the night to shoot at
the shadow of a whisper. Now come along, and keep low, and drop the
instant a light flares."

They crawled back a score or so of yards that brought them to the
elbow-turn of the depression. The bank of the turn was practically the
last cover they could count upon, because here the ditch shallowed and
widened and was, in addition, more or less open to enfilading fire from
the German side.

Ainsley halted the men and whispered to them that as soon as they
cleared the ditch they were to crawl out into open order, starting as
soon as darkness fell after the next light. Next moment they commenced
to move, and as they did so Ainsley fancied he heard a stealthy
rustling in the grass immediately in front of him. It occurred to him
that their long delay might have led to the sending out of a search
party, and he was on the point of whispering an order back to the men
to halt, while he investigated, when a couple of pistol lights flared
upwards, lighting the ground immediately about them. To his
surprise--surprise was his only feeling for the moment--he found
himself staring into a bearded face not six feet from his own, and
above the face was the little round flat cap that marked the man a
German.

Both he and the German saw each other at the same instant; but because
the same imminent peril was over each, each instinctively dropped flat
to the wet ground. Ainsley had just time to glimpse the movement of
other three or four gray-coated figures as they also fell flat. Next
instant, he heard his sergeant's voice, hurried and sharp with warning,
but still low toned.

"Look out, sir! There's a big Boche just in front of you."

Ainsley "sh-sh-shed" him to silence, and at the same time was a little
amused and a great deal relieved to hear the German in front of him
similarly hush down the few low exclamations of his party. The flare
was still burning, and Ainsley, twisting his head, was able to look
across the muddy grass at the German eyes staring anxiously into his
own.

"Do not move!" said Ainsley, wondering to himself if the man understood
English, and fumbling in vain in his mind for the German phrase that
would express his meaning.

"Kamarade--eh?" grunted the German, with a note of interrogation that
left no doubt as to his meaning.

"Nein, nein!" answered Ainsley. "You kamarade--sie kamarade."

The other, in somewhat voluble gutturals, insisted that Ainsley must
"kamarade," otherwise surrender. He spoke too fast for Ainsley's very
limited knowledge of German to follow, but at least, to Ainsley's
relief, there was for the moment no motion towards hostilities on
either side. The Germans recognized, no doubt as he did, that the first
sign of a shot, the first wink of a rifle flash out there in the open,
would bring upon them a blaze of light and a storm of rifle and maxim
bullets. Even although his party had slightly the advantage of position
in the scanty cover of the ditch, he was not at all inclined to bring
about another burst of firing, particularly as he was not sure that
some excitable individuals in his own trench would not forget about his
party being in the open and hail indiscriminate bullets in the
direction of a rifle flash, or even the sound of indiscreetly loud
talking.

Painfully, in very broken German, and a word or two at a time, he tried
to make his enemy understand that it was his, the German party, that
must surrender, pointing out as an argument that they were nearer to
the British than to the German lines. The German, however, discounted
this argument by stating that he had one more man in his party than
Ainsley had, and must therefore claim the privilege of being captor.

The voice of his own sergeant close behind him spoke in a hoarse
undertone: "Shall I blow a blinkin' 'ole in 'im, sir? I could do 'im in
acrost your shoulder, as easy as kiss my 'and."

"No, no!" said Ainsley hurriedly; "a shot here would raise the
mischief."

At the same time he heard some of the other Germans speak to the man in
front of him and discovered that they were addressing him as
"Sergeant."

"Sie ein sergeant?" he questioned, and on the German admitting that he
was a sergeant, Ainsley, with more fumbling after German words and
phrases, explained that he was an officer, and that therefore his, an
officer's patrol, took precedence over that of a mere sergeant. He had
a good deal of difficulty in making this clear to the German--either
because the sergeant was particularly thick-witted or possibly because
Ainsley's German was particularly bad. Ainsley inclined to put it down
to the German's stupidity, and he began to grow exceedingly wroth over
the business. Naturally it never occurred to him that he should
surrender to the German, but it annoyed him exceedingly that the German
should have any similar feelings about surrendering to him. Once more
he bent his persuasive powers and indifferent German to the task of
over-persuading the sergeant, and in return had to wait and slowly
unravel some meaning from the odd words he could catch here and there
in the sergeant's endeavor to over-persuade him.

He began to think at last that there was no way out of it but that
suggested by his own sergeant--namely, to "blow a blinkin' 'ole in
'im," and his sergeant spoke again with the rattle of his chattering
teeth playing a castanet accompaniment to his words.

"If you don't mind, sir, we'd all like to fight it out and make a run
for it. We're all about froze stiff."

"I'm just about fed up with this fool, too," said Ainsley disgustedly.
"Look here, all of you! Watch me when the next light goes up. If you
see me grab my pistol, pick your man and shoot."

The voice of the German sergeant broke in:--

"Nein, nein!" and then in English: "You no shoot! You shoot, and uns
shoot alzo!"

Ainsley listened to the stammering English in an amazement that gave
way to overwhelming anger. "Here," he said angrily, "can you speak
English?"

"Ein leetle, just ein leetle," replied the German.

But at that and at the memory of the long minutes spent there lying in
the mud with chilled and frozen limbs trying to talk in German, at the
time wasted, at his own stumbling German and the probable amusement his
grammatical mistakes had given the others--the last, the Englishman's
dislike to being laughed at, being perhaps the strongest
factor--Ainsley's anger overcame him.

"You miserable blighter!" he said wrathfully. "You have the blazing
cheek to keep me lying here in this filthy muck, mumbling and bungling
over your beastly German, and then calmly tell me that you understand
English all the time.

"Why couldn't you _say_ you spoke English? What! D'you think I've
nothing better to do than lie out here in a puddle of mud listening to
you jabbering your beastly lingo? Silly ass! You saw that I didn't know
German properly, to begin with--why couldn't you say you spoke
English?"

But in his anger he had raised his voice a good deal above the safety
limit, and the quick crackle of rifle fire and the soaring lights told
that his voice had been heard, that the party or parties were
discovered or suspected.

The rest followed so quickly, the action was so rapid and
unpremeditated, that Ainsley never quite remembered its sequence. He
has a confused memory of seeing the wet ground illumined by many
lights, of drumming rifle fire and hissing bullets, and then,
immediately after, the rush and crash of a couple of German "Fizz-Bang"
shells. Probably it was the wet _plop_ of some of the backward-flung
bullets about him, possibly it was the movement of the German sergeant
that wiped out the instinctive desire to flatten himself close to
ground that drove him to instant action. The sergeant half lurched to
his knees, thrusting forward the muzzle of his rifle. Ainsley clutched
at the revolver in his holster, but before he could free it another
shell crashed, the German jerked forward as if struck by a
battering-ram between the shoulders, lay with white fingers clawing and
clutching at the muddy grass. A momentary darkness fell, and Ainsley
just had a glimpse of a knot of struggling figures, of the knot's
falling apart with a clash of steel, of a rifle spouting a long tongue
of flame ... and then a group of lights blazed again and disclosed the
figures of his own three men crouching and glancing about them.

Of all these happenings Ainsley retains only a very jumbled
recollection, but he remembers very distinctly his savage satisfaction
at seeing "that fool sergeant" downed and the unappeased anger he still
felt with him. He carried that anger back to his own trench; it still
burned hot in him as they floundered and wallowed for interminable
seconds over the greasy mud with the bullets slapping and smacking
about them, as they wrenched and struggled over their own wire--where
Ainsley, as it happened, had to wait to help his sergeant, who for all
the advantage of their initiative in the attack and in the Germans
being barely risen to meet it, had been caught by a bayonet-thrust in
the thigh--the scramble across the parapet and hurried roll over into
the waterlogged trench.

He arrived there wet to the skin and chilled to the bone, with his
shoulder stinging abominably from the ragged tear of a ricochet bullet
that had caught him in the last second on the parapet, and, above all,
still filled with a consuming anger against the German sergeant. Five
minutes later, in the Battalion H.Q. dugout, in making his report to
the O.C. while the Medical dressed his arm, he only gave the barest and
briefest account of his successful patrol and bombing work, but
descanted at full length and with lurid wrath on the incident of the
German patrol.

"When I think of that ignorant beast of a sergeant keeping me out
there," he concluded disgustedly, "mumbling and spluttering over his
confounded 'yaw, yaw' and 'nein, nein,' trying to scrape up odd German
words--which I probably got all wrong--to make him understand, and him
all the time quite well able to speak good enough English--that's what
beats me--why couldn't he _say_ he spoke English?"

"Well, anyhow," said the O.C. consolingly, "from what you tell me, he's
dead now."

"I hope so," said Ainsley viciously, "and serve him jolly well right.
But just think of the trouble it might have saved if he'd only said at
first that he spoke English!" He sputtered wrathfully again: "Silly
ass! Why couldn't he just _say_ so?"



AS OTHERS SEE


_"It may now be divulged that, some time ago, the British lines were
extended for a considerable distance to the South."_--EXTRACT FROM
OFFICIAL DISPATCH.


The first notice that the men of the Tower Bridge Foot had that they
were to move outside the territory they had learned so well in many
weary marches and wanderings in networks and mazes of trenches, was
when they crossed a road which had for long marked the boundary line
between the grounds occupied by the British and French forces.

"Do you suppose the O.C. is drunk, or that the guide has lost his way?"
said Private Robinson. "Somebody ought to tell him we're off our beat
and that trespassers will be prosecuted. Not but what he don't know
that, seeing he prosecuted me cruel six months ago for roving off into
the French lines--said if I did it again I might be took for a spy and
shot. Anyhow, I'd be took for being where I was out o' bounds and get a
dose of Field Punishment. Wonder where we're bound for?"

"Don't see as it matters much," said his next file. "I suppose one wet
field's as good as another to sleep in, so why worry?"

A little farther on, the battalion met a French Infantry Regiment on
the march. The French regiment's road discipline was rather more lax
than the British, and many tolerantly amused criticisms were passed on
the loose formation, the lack of keeping step, and the straggling lines
of the French. The criticisms, curiously enough, came in a great many
cases from the very men in the Towers' ranks who had often "groused"
most at the silliness of themselves being kept up to the mark in these
matters. The marching Frenchmen were singing--but singing in a fashion
quite novel to the British. Throughout their column there were anything
up to a dozen songs in progress, some as choruses and some as solos,
and the effect was certainly rather weird. The Tower Bridge officers,
knowing their own men's fondness for swinging march songs, expected,
and, to tell truth, half hoped that they would give a display of their
harmonious powers. They did, but hardly in the expected fashion. One
man demanded in a growling bass that the "Home Fires be kept Burning,"
while another bade farewell to Leicester Square in a high falsetto. The
giggling Towers caught the idea instantly, and a confused medley of
hymns, music-hall ditties, and patriotic songs in every key, from the
deepest bellowing bass to the shrillest wailing treble, arose from the
Towers' ranks, mixed with whistles and cat-calls and Corporal
Flannigan's famous imitation of "Life on a Farm." The joke lasted the
Towers for the rest of that march, and as sure as any Frenchman met or
overtook them on the road he was treated to a vocal entertainment that
must have left him forever convinced of the rumored potency of British
rum.

By now word had passed round the Towers that they were to take over a
portion of the trenches hitherto occupied by the French. Many were the
doubts, and many were the arguments, as to whether this would or would
not be to the personal advantage and comfort of themselves; but at
least it made a change of scene and surroundings from those they had
learned for months past, and since such a change is as the breath of
life to the British soldier, they were on the whole highly pleased with
it.

The morning was well advanced when they were met by guides and
interpreters from the French regiment which they were relieving, and
commenced to move into the new trenches. Although at first there were
some who were inclined to criticize, and reluctant to believe that a
Frenchman, or any other foreigner, could do or make anything better
than an Englishman, the Towers had to admit, even before they reached
the forward firing trench, that the work of making communication
trenches had been done in a manner beyond British praise. The trenches
were narrow and very deep, neatly paved throughout their length with
brick, spaced at regular intervals with sunk traps for draining off
rain-water, and with bays and niches cut deep in the side to permit the
passing of any one meeting a line of pack-burdened men in the
shoulder-wide alley-way.

When they reached the forward firing trench, their admiration became
unbounded; they were as full of eager curiosity as children on a school
picnic. They fraternized instantly and warmly with the outgoing
Frenchmen, and the Frenchmen for their part were equally eager to
express friendship, to show the English the dugouts, the handy little
contrivances for comfort and safety, to bequeath to their successors
all sorts of stoves and pots and cooking utensils, and generally to
give an impression, which was put into words by Private Robinson:
"Strike me if this ain't the most cordiawl bloomin' ongtongt I've ever
met!"

The Towers had never realized, or regretted, their lack of the French
as deeply as they came to do now. Hitherto dealings in the language had
been entirely with the women in the villages and billets of the reserve
lines, where there was plenty of time to find means of expressing the
two things that for the most part were all they had to express--their
wants and their thanks. And because by now they had no slightest
difficulty in making these billet inhabitants understand what they
required--a fire for cooking, stretching space on a floor, the location
of the nearest estaminets, whether eggs, butter, and bread were
obtainable, and how much was the price--they had fondly imagined in
their hearts, and boasted loudly in their home letters, that they were
quite satisfactorily conversant with the French language. Now they were
to discover that their knowledge was not quite so extensive as they had
imagined, although it never occurred to them that the French women in
the billets were learning English a great deal more rapidly and
efficiently than they were learning French, that it was not altogether
their mastery of the language which instantly produced soap and water,
for instance, when they made motions of washing their hands and said
slowly and loudly: "Soap--you compree, soap and l'eau; you
savvy--l'eau, wa-ter." But now, when it came to the technicalities of
their professional business, they found their command of the language
completely inadequate. There were many of them who could ask, "What is
the time?" but that helped them little to discover at what time the
Germans made a practice of shelling the trenches; they could have asked
with ease, "Have you any eggs?" but they could not twist this into a
sentence to ask whether there were any egg-selling farms in the
vicinity; could have asked "how much" was the bread, but not how many
yards it was to the German trench.

A few Frenchmen, who spoke more or less English, found themselves in
enormous French and English demand, while Private 'Enery Irving, who
had hitherto borne some reputation as a French speaker--a reputation,
it may be mentioned, largely due to his artful knack of helping out
spoken words by imitation and explanatory acting--found his bubble
reputation suddenly and disastrously pricked. He made some attempt to
clutch at its remains by listening to the remarks addressed to him by a
Frenchman, with a most potently intelligent and understanding
expression, by ejaculating "Nong, nong!" and a profoundly understanding
"Ah, wee!" at intervals in the one-sided conversation. He tried this
method when called upon by a puzzled private to interpret the
torrential speech of a Frenchman, who wished to know whether the Towers
had any jam to spare, or whether they would exchange a rum ration for
some French wine. 'Enery interjected a few "Ah, wee's!" and then at the
finish explained to the private.

"He speaks a bit fast," he said, "but he's trying to tell me something
about him coming from a place called Conserve, and that we can have his
'room' here--meaning, I suppose, his dug-out." He turned to the
Frenchman, spread out his hands, shrugged his shoulders, and
gesticulated after the most approved fashion of the stage Frenchman,
bowed deeply, and said, _"Merci, Monsieur,"_ many times. The Frenchman
naturally looked a good deal puzzled, but bowed politely in reply and
repeated his question at length. This producing no effect except
further stage shrugs, he seized upon one of the interpreters who was
passing and explained rapidly. "He asks," said the interpreter, turning
to 'Enery and the other men, "whether you have any _conserve et
rhum_--jam and rum--you wish to exchange for his wine." After that
'Enery Irving collapsed in the public estimation as a French speaker.

When the Towers were properly installed, and the French regiment
commenced to move out, a Tower Bridge officer came along and told his
men that they were to be careful to keep out of sight, as the orders
were to deceive the Germans opposite and to keep them ignorant as long
as possible of the British-French exchange. Private Robinson promptly
improved upon this idea. He found a discarded French képi, put it on
his head, and looked over the parapet. He only stayed up for a second
or two and ducked again, just as a bullet whizzed over the parapet. He
repeated the performance at intervals from different parts of the
trench, but finding that his challenge drew quicker and quicker replies
was obliged at last to lift the cap no more than into sight on the
point of a bayonet. He was rather pleased with the applause of his
fellows and the half-dozen prompt bullets which each appearance of the
cap at last drew, until one bullet, piercing the cap and striking the
point of the bayonet, jarred his fingers unpleasantly and deflected the
bullet dangerously and noisily close to his ear. Some of the Frenchmen
who were filing out had paused to watch this performance, laughing and
bravo-ing at its finish. Robinson bowed with a magnificent flourish,
then replaced the képi on the point of the bayonet, raised the képi,
and made the bayonet bow to the audience. A French officer came
bustling along the trench urging his men to move on. He stood there to
keep the file passing along without check, and Robinson turned
presently to some of the others and asked if they knew what was the
meaning of this "Mays ongfong" that the officer kept repeating to his
men. "Ongfong," said 'Enery Irving briskly, seizing the opportunity to
reëstablish himself as a French speaker, "means 'children'; spelled
e-n-f-a-n-t-s, pronounced _ongfong_."

"Children!" said Robinson. "Infants, eh? 'ealthy lookin' lot o'
infants. There's one now--that six-foot chap with the Father Christmas
whiskers; 'ow's that for a' infant?"

As the Frenchmen filed out some of them smiled and nodded and called
cheery good-bys to our men, and 'Enery Irving turned to a man beside
him. "This," he said, "is about where some appropriate music should
come in the book. Exit to triumphant strains of martial music Buck up,
Snapper! Can't you mouth-organ 'em the Mar-shall-aise?"

Snapper promptly produced his instrument and mouth-organed the opening
bars, and the Towers joined in and sang the tune with vociferous
"la-la-las." When they had finished, two or three of the Frenchmen,
after a quick word together struck up "God Save the King." Instantly
the others commenced to pick it up, but before they had sung three
words 'Enery Irving, in tones of horror, demanded "The Mar-shall-aise
again; quick, you idiot!" from Snapper, and himself swung off into a
falsetto rendering of "Three Blind Mice." In a moment the Towers had in
full swing their medley caricature of the French march singing, under
which "God Save the King" was very completely drowned.

"What the devil d'you mean? Are you all mad?" demanded a wrathful
subaltern, plunging round the traverse to where Snapper mouth-organed
the "Marseillaise," 'Enery Irving lustily intoned his anthem of the
Blind Mice, and Corporal Flannigan passed from the deep lowing of a cow
to the clarion calls of the farmyard rooster.

"Beg pardon, sir," said 'Enery Irving with lofty dignity, "but if I
'adn't started this row the 'ole trenchful o' Frenchies would 'ave been
'owling our 'Gawd Save.' I saw that 'ud be a clean give-away, an' the
order bein' to act so as to deceive----"

"Quite right," said the officer, "and a smart idea of yours to block
it. But who was the crazy ass who started it by singing the
'Marseillaise'?" On this point, however, 'Enery was discreetly silent.

Before the French had cleared the trench the Germans opened a leisurely
bombardment with a trench mortar. This delayed the proceeding somewhat,
because it was reckoned wiser to halt the men and clear them from the
crowded trench into the dug-outs. "With the double company of French
and British, there was rather a tight squeeze in the shelters,
wonderfully commodious as they were.

"Now this," said Corporal Flannigan, "is what I call something like a
dug-out." He looked appreciatively round the square, smooth-walled
chamber and up the steps to the small opening which gave admittance to
it. "Good dodge, too, this sinking it deep underground. Even if a bomb
dropped in the trench just outside, and pieces blew in the door, they'd
only go over our heads. Something like, this is."

"I wonder," said another reflectively, "why we don't have dug-outs like
this in our line?" He spoke in a slightly aggrieved tone, as if dugouts
were things that were issued from the Quarter-Master's store, and
therefore a legitimate cause for free complaint. He and his fellows
would certainly have felt a good deal more aggrieved, however, if they
had been set the labor of making such dug-outs.

Up above, such of the French and British as had been left in the trench
were having quite a busy time with the bombs. The Frenchmen had rather
a unique way of dodging these, which the Towers were quick to adopt.
The whole length of the trench was divided up into compartments by
strong traverses running back at right angles from the forward parapet,
and in each of these compartments there were anything from four or five
to a dozen men, all crowded to the backward end of the traverse,
waiting and watching there to see the bomb come twirling slowly and
clumsily over. As it reached the highest point of its curve and began
to fall down towards the trench, it was as a rule fairly easy to say
whether it would fall to right or left of the traverse. If it fell in
the trench to the right, the men hurriedly plunged round the corner of
the traverse to the left, and waited there till the bomb exploded. The
crushing together at the angle of the traverse, the confused cries of
warning or advice, or speculation as to which side a bomb would fall,
the scuffling, tumbling rush to one side or the other, the cries of
derision which greeted the ineffective explosion--all made up a sort of
game. The Towers had had a good many unhappy experiences with bombs,
and at first played the unknown game carefully and anxiously, and with
some doubts as to its results. But they soon picked it up, and
presently made quite merry at it, laughing and shouting noisily,
tumbling and picking themselves up and laughing again like children.

They lost three men, who were wounded through their slowness in
escaping from the compartment where the bomb exploded, and this rather
put the Towers on their mettle. As Private Robinson remarked, it wasn't
the cheese that a Frenchman should beat an Englishman at any blooming
game.

"If we could only get a little bit of a stake on it," he said
wistfully, "we could take 'em on, the winners being them that loses
least men."

It being impossible, however, to convey to the Frenchmen that interest
would be added by the addition of a little bet, the Towers had to
content themselves with playing platoon against platoon amongst
themselves, the losing platoon pay, what they could conveniently
afford, the day's rations of the men who were casualtied. The
subsequent task of dividing one and a quarter pots of jam, five
portions of cheese, bacon and a meat-and-potato stew was only settled
eventually by resource to a set of dice.

As the bombing continued methodically, the French artillery, who were
still covering this portion of the trench, set to work to silence the
mortar, and the Towers thoroughly enjoyed the ensuing performance, and
the generous, not to say extravagant, fashion in which the French
battery, after the usual custom of French batteries, lavished its
shells upon the task. For five minutes the battery spoke in
four-tongued emphatic tones, and the shells screamed over the forward