"At Ten o'Clock Sharp!"
"Hawke!"
"Sir!" And the marksman of A Company jumped across the floor of the
trench to the door of the dug-out with surprising alacrity, as the merry
laughing face of Dennis Dashwood showed in the square hole in the wall
of the parados.
From the moment Bob Dashwood had made Dennis known to Harry Hawke as "my
brother," that worthy had attached himself to the new arrival with the
same devotion he showed to the captain, and the more he saw of Dennis
the more devoted he became.
"Hawke," said the subaltern, "I'm going over to-night, and I want three
old hands to go with me. The Divisional C.O. wishes the enemy wire
examined, and I've put in for the job. You can come if you fancy it.
What do you say?"
"I says yus!" cried Harry Hawke, with a widening of the grin that
puckered his dirty, mahogany-coloured face. "Better let me pick you out
two more, sir, what knows the game."
"Right-o!" assented Dennis. "Of course, it all depends on whether their
guns start strafing our trench at dusk. If not, and everything is fairly
quiet, we'll move out at ten sharp," and he consulted his wristlet
watch--Mrs. Dashwood's last present.
"What's this conspiracy? Can't I be in it too?" said a strange voice
that made Harry Hawke jump round, ready to salute, but his hand dropped
to his side again, for it was only an Australian corporal, who had come
along the trench behind him unnoticed.
"Why, Dan, old fellow! Where on earth have you sprung from?" cried
Dennis, emerging from his burrow and seizing the outstretched hand as
though he never meant to let it go again.
"It isn't a long story, Dennis," laughed the corporal, who was a
broad-shouldered young fellow a year or two the boy's senior. "They've
just moved our crowd in behind the brigade on your right, and the first
person I set eyes on was Uncle Arthur, who happens to know our old man.
So, as we are in the reserve trenches and nothing doing, I asked leave
to come over here to see you, and got it too. Uncle told me you had only
just arrived. How long have you been here?"
"Forty-eight hours," said Dennis. "Come and see my quarters."
His cousin ducked his head and followed him down the three steps that
led into the dug-out.
"'Will you walk into my parlour, said the spider to the fly,'" murmured
Dan Dunn.
"Quite so," laughed Dennis. "But we haven't room for even a spider's
web, though the rats are an infernal nuisance."
"There are worse things in this world than rats," said his cousin,
looking round at the little square cave excavated months before by the
Germans in the chalky soil, and seating himself on one of the two cots.
"Who's your room-mate?"
"My brother Bob. He's our platoon commander, you know. He'll be in
presently for tea. But, I say, isn't this just ripping?"
"It's certainly better than Gallipoli," said Dunn with a quiet,
retrospective smile. "Gad, Dennis, that was an awful hash up!" And he
blew a cloud of tobacco smoke to circle upwards among the shelves and
lockers, where all sorts of things were stowed away.
"Beg pardon, sir," said Private Hawke, thrusting his head in at the
door. "You didn't answer this gentleman's question. Does he want to come
with us to-night?"
"Oh, yes--did you mean that, Dan? It's like this," explained Dennis.
"The Boches have been putting up some fresh wire over yonder, and they
want to know at D.H.Q. whether it's permanent or temporary. I rather
fancy there's a bit of a raid on the cards, and I'm going out to
reconnoitre."
"Do I mean it!" laughed his cousin. "As long as I report myself at
sun-up it's all right."
"Very well, Hawke, my cousin will go with us."
"Then we'll only want one other man, sir, and I'll warn Tiddler. He can
smell Germans in the dark."
"That doesn't take much doing," smiled Dennis. "They're a filthy crowd,
anyhow. Ten o'clock sharp! And ask Smithers if that kettle's boiling."
Harry Hawke had scarcely removed his drab figure from the doorway when
Captain Dashwood blotted out the light and dived in upon them with a
dexterity born of much practice.
His greeting with the Australian cousin was warm enough, but they both
saw something unusual in his face as Dan squeezed up on the cot and made
room for him.
"Read this, Dennis," he said. "The mater's just sent it over," and he
tossed Ottilie's farewell letter across the dug-out.
"The pigs!" cried Dennis hotly. "I can't say it doesn't surprise me,
because it does; but, you know, I never tumbled either to the man or to
his sister. What does the governor say?"
"He's very sick," replied Bob. "Especially as he gave the whole show
away in his letter. Luckily the mater took it from the postman herself,
and she doesn't think they can possibly have seen it. But there it
is--one never knows. It is the beastly ingratitude that gets over me.
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 worship?" 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 butter, and finished up with jam, which Dan Dunn passed 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
shell stores at the artillery dumps, which had struck Dan Dunn very
forcibly as his battalion passed 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 shell 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 shelling 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 grass, 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.
"We ought to be on it now," murmured Dennis. "It's a quarter of an hour
since we left the listening post." And he felt cautiously to the full
extent of his arms, but without encountering an upright standard.
They did not know it, but they had passed through a gap!
"Hold on!" whispered the Australian; "I thought I heard something quite
close on the left there."
Dennis heard it, too, at the same moment. It was like the solemn rattle
of earth falling into a newly made grave.
"It's only the chalk settling in those other crump-holes Baker warned us
about," he said, after they had listened breathlessly for a few moments.
"Our two fellows must have gone wide and struck them."
But he was wrong. The crump-holes were on the left, far behind, if they
had only known it; and it was from their right rear that a sudden
muffled exclamation came out of the stillness.
"'Evins!" said Tiddler, as he felt the sharp barbs of a low-stretched
strand bury themselves in the slack of his pants. "'Arry, I'm 'ung up!"
"Shut yer 'ead! What's the trouble?" growled his companion; and as Harry
Hawke groped for his mate he shook the strand; the well-known jangle of
an empty bully-beef tin warning them all that they had struck one of the
simplest expedients of modern warfare, freely used by both sides.
A tin dangling on the barbed wire does not ring like a cracked bell
unless somebody touches it; and from the darkness just in front and
above their heads, Dan and Dennis heard a guttural whisper, and,
realising that they were immediately under the enemy's parapet, lay as
flat as playing cards.
"It's those two fellows of mine," breathed Dennis in his cousin's ear.
"But how the dickens have we passed the wire without giving the alarm?"
Dan, with recollections of Anzac fresh upon him, remembered that slither
of earth from those crump-holes on the left.
"I'll bet you anything there's a party gone out to your trench, and
they've shifted a section of the wire to let them through," he replied.
"We may meet them on the way back. Don't move! We know, anyhow, that
their new wire's not fixed!"
Voices were humming above them now, and the German trench guards were
evidently on the alert. Still nothing happened, and Dennis was just
congratulating himself that their presence there was unsuspected when
there was a sharp sound from the top of the sandbags, and a pistol light
soared above their heads, illuminating the darkness.
For a moment everything was distinctly visible, although they themselves
were so far hidden by the German sandbags; but as Dennis looked back
over his shoulder, he saw the luckless Tiddler lying prone and helpless
in the open, and the white face of Hawke telling out strong in the
glare.
A hoarse shout from the German trench went up as the pistol flare died
down, showing that they had been seen.
"Give us a hand, matey; I ain't 'arf caught!" entreated Tiddler, who,
resting principally on his face and one knee, was making violent efforts
to disengage himself.
"'Old still!" growled Hawke, producing his nippers and snapping the
strand in two places, leaving a short piece about a foot in length
embedded in the tough cloth. "Now yer clear; back out of it." And as he
seized his rifle a green star-shell soared overhead, and there was an
ear-splitting screech above them.
"That's high velocity," whispered Dan Dunn, as they heard the splosh of
a heavy shell in rear of the British parapet, followed by a deafening
explosion and a red flame. "We've drawn them this time, old man, but I
can't make out why these beggars in the trench here don't fire. I'm for
making a bolt for it before they start. What do you say?"
Dennis gathered his legs under him, and signalled with his arm to Hawke
and Tiddler to go back, and expecting nothing but death for themselves,
the two cousins suddenly jumped up under the very noses of the men
lining the parapet behind them, and sprinted for the gap in the barbed
wire.
One bullet sang by Dan's ear, and another spurted up the chalk dust a
few feet ahead of Dennis, and as the vicious rat-tat of the machine-gun
farther down the trench opened, they found themselves at the edge of a
deep crump-hole, into which they rolled.
It was cover from the machine-gun, at any rate, but a cry of surprise
broke from the young lieutenant's lips as he landed on something soft at
the bottom of the hole, something which gripped him with a similar cry
of surprise.
* * * * *
A shell-burst eighty yards away drowned the crack of Dan Dunn's
revolver, and two out of the three Germans who had taken refuge in the
same place rolled back and lay very still, just as another star-shell, a
bright white one this time, broke above them and lit up the hole like
day.