Part 36

But on this last morning, when the sap had approached to within twenty or thirty feet of the white head which was its objective, the Colonel's attention was directed to the matter somewhat forcibly. He heard the roar of exploding heavy shells, and as the "crump, crump," continued steadily, he telephoned from the headquarters dug-out in rear of the support line to ask the forward trenches what was happening.

While he waited an answer, a message came from the Brigade saying that the artillery had reported heavy German shelling on a sap-head, and demanding to know what, where, and why was the sap-head referred to. While the Colonel was puzzling over this mysterious message and vainly trying to recall any sap-head within his sector of line, the regimental Padre came into the dug-out.

"I've just come from the dressing station," he said, "and there's a boy there, McRory, that has me fair bewildered with his ravings. He's wounded in the head with a shrapnel splinter, and, although he seems sane and sensible enough in other ways, he's been begging me and the doctor not to send him back to the hospital. Did ever ye hear the like, and him with a lump as big as the palm of my hand cut from his head to the bare bone, and bleeding like a stuck pig in an apoplexy?"

The Colonel looked at him vacantly, his mind between this and the other problem of the Brigade's message.

"And that's not all that's in it," went on the Padre. "The doctor was telling me that there's been a round dozen of the past two days' casualties begging that same thing--not to be sent away till we come out of the trenches. And to beat all, McRory, when he was told he was going just the minute the ambulance came, had a confab with the stretcher bearers, and I heard him arguing with them about 'his share,' and 'when they got the Gineral,' and 'my bit o' the fifty thousand francs.' It has me beat completely."

By now the Colonel was completely bewildered, and he began to wonder whether he or his battalion were hopelessly mad. It was extraordinary enough that the men should have dug so willingly and well, and without a grumble being heard or a complaint made.

It was still more extraordinary that more or less severely wounded men should not be ardently desirous of the safety and comfort and feeding of the hospitals; and on the top of all was this mysterious message of a sap apparently being made by his men voluntarily and without any sanction, much less the usual required pressure.

A message came from Captain Conroy, in the forward trench, to say that Riley was coming up to headquarters and would explain matters.

Riley and the explanation duly arrived. "Ould Prickles," inclined at first to be mightily wroth at the unauthorized digging of the sap, caught a twinkle in the Padre's eye; and a modest hint from the Little Lad reminding him of the speed and excellence of the new trenches, construction turned the scale. He burst into a roar of laughter, and the Padre joined him heartily, while the Little Lad stood beaming and chuckling complacently.

"I must tell the Brigadier this," gasped the O.C. at last. "He might have had a cross word or two to say about a sap being dug without orders, but, thank heaven, he's an Irishman, and a poorer joke would excuse a worse crime with him. But I'm wondering what's going to happen when they reach their General and find no francs, and no watch, and not even a General; and mind you, Riley, the sap must be stopped at once. I can't be having good men casualtied on an unofficial job. Will you see to that right away?"

The Little Lad's chuckling rose to open giggling.

"It's stopped now, sir," he said--"just before I came up here. And what's more, the General won't need explaining; the German gunners spied our sap, and, trying to drop a heavy shell on it--well, they dropped one on to the General. So now there isn't a General, only a hole in the ground where he was."

Ould Prickles' and the Padre's laughter bellowed again.

"I must tell that to the Brigadier, too," said the O.C.; "that finish to the joke will completely satisfy him."

"And I must go," said the Padre, rising, "and tell McRory, though I'm not just sure whether it will be after satisfying him quite so completely."

AT LAST

"WHEN WE BEGIN TO PUSH"

"Here we are," said the Colonel, halting his horse. "Fine view one gets from here."

"Rather a treat to be able to see over a bit of country again, after so many months of the flat," said, the Adjutant, reining up beside the other. They were halted on the top of a hill, or, father, the corner of an edge on a wide plateau. On two sides of them the ground fell away abruptly, the road they were on dipping sharply over the edge and sweeping round and downward in a well-graded slope along the face of the hill to the wide flats below. Over these flats they could see for many miles, miles of cultivated fields, of little woods, of gentle slopes. They could count the buildings of many farms, the roofs of half a dozen villages, the spires of twice as many churches, the tall chimneys and gaunt frame towers of scattered pit-heads. It had been raining all day, but now in the late afternoon the clouds had broken and the light of the low sun was tinging the landscape with a mellow golden glow.

"There's going to be a beautiful sunset presently," said the Colonel, "with all those heavy broken clouds about. Let's dismount and wait for a bit."

Both dismounted and handed their reins to the orderly, who, riding behind them, had halted when they did, but now at a sign came forward.

"We'll just stroll to that rise on the left," the Colonel said. "The best view should be from there."

The Adjutant lingered a moment. "Take their bits out, Trumpeter," he said, "and let them pick a mouthful of grass along the roadside."

A rough country track ran to the left off the main road, and the two walked along it a couple of hundred yards to where it plunged over the crest and ran steeply down the hillside. Another main road ran along the flat parallel with the hill foot, and along this crawled a long khaki column.

"Look at the light on those hills over there," said the Colonel. "Fine, isn't it?"

The Adjutant was busily engaged with the field-glasses he had taken from the case slung over his shoulder and was focusing them on the road below.

"I say," he remarked suddenly, "those are the Canadians. I didn't know the ----th Division was so far south. Moving up front, too." The Colonel dropped his gaze to the road a moment and then swept it slowly over the country-side. "Yes," he said, "and this area is pretty well crowded with troops when you look closely."

The light on the distant hills was growing more golden and beautiful, the clouds were beginning to catch the first tints of the sunset, but neither men for the moment noticed these things, searching with their gaze the landscape below, sifting it over and picking out a battery of artillery camped in a big chalk-pit by the roadside, the slow-rising and drifting columns of blue smoke that curled up from a distant wood and told of the regiment encamped there, the long strings of horses converging on a big mine building for the afternoon watering, the lines of transport wagons parked on the outskirts of a village, the shifting khaki figures that stirred about every farm building in sight, the row of gray-painted motor-omnibuses, drawn up in a long line on a side road. The countryside that under a first look slept peacefully in the afternoon sunlight, that drowsed calmly in the easy quiet of an uneventful field and farm existence, proved under the closer searching look to be a teeming hive of activity, a close-packed camp of well-armed fighting men, a widespread net and chain of men and guns and horses. The peaceful countryside was overflowing with men and bristling with bayonets; every village was a crammed-full military cantonment, every barn stuffed with soldiers like an overfilled barracks.