The overwhelming impression was the brilliant health and
vitality of these men and the quality of their breeding. They
bore themselves with swing and rampant delight in life, while
their voices as they talked in the side-caverns among the
stands of arms were the controlled voices of civilization.
Yet, as the lights pierced the gloom they looked like bandits
dividing the spoil. One picture, though far from war, stays
with me. A perfectly built, dark-skinned young giant had
peeled himself out of his blue coat and had brought it down
with a swish upon the shoulder of a half-stripped comrade who
was kneeling at his feet with some footgear. They stood
against a background of semi-luminous blue haze, through which
glimmered a pile of coppery straw half covered by a red
blanket. By divine accident of light and pose it St. Martin
giving his cloak to the beggar. There were scores of pictures
in these galleries--notably a rock-hewn chapel where the red
of the cross on the rough canvas altar-cloth glowed like a
ruby. Further inside the caves we found a row of little
rock-cut kennels, each inhabited by one wise, silent dog.
Their duties begin in at night with the sentinels and
listening-posts. "And believe me," a proud instructor, "my
fellow here knows the difference between the noise of our shells
and the Boche shells."
When we came out into the open again there were good
opportunities for this study. Voices and wings met and passed
in the air, and, perhaps, one strong young tree had not been
bending quite so far across the picturesque park-drive when we
first went that way.
"Oh, yes," said an officer, "shells have to fall somewhere,
and," he added with fine toleration, "it is, after all,
against us that the Boche directs them. But come you and look
at my dug-out. It's the most superior of all possible
dug-outs."
"No. Come and look at our mess. It's the Ritz of these
parts." And they joyously told how they had got, or procured,
the various fittings and elegancies, while hands stretched out
of the gloom to shake, and men nodded welcome and greeting all
through that cheery brotherhood in the woods.