Chapter 16

In the sap several fresh men were constantly awaiting their turn at the face with pick and shovel. The diggers did no more than five minutes' work, hacking and spading at top speed, yielding their tools to the next comer and retiring, panting and blowing and mopping their streaming brows.

A fairly constant fire was maintained by the artillery on both sides, the shells splashing and crashing on the open ground about the new trench and the German parapet. There was little wind, and as a result the smoke of the shell-bursts hung heavily and trailed slowly over the open space between the trenches, veiling to some extent the sapping operations and the new trench. On the latter a tendency was quickly displayed to slacken work and to treat the job as being sufficiently complete, but when it came to Lieutenant Riley's turn to take charge of a fresh relief of workers on the new trench, he very quickly succeeded in brisking up operations.

Arrived at the listening-post, he found Sergeant Clancy and spoke a few words to him.

"Clancy," he said gently, "the work along that new trench is going a great deal too slow."

"'Tis hard work, sorr," replied Clancy excusingly, "and you'll be remembering the boys have been at it all night."

"Quite so, Clancy," said Riley smoothly, "and since it has to be dug a good six foot deep, I am just thinking the best thing to do will be to take this other party off the sap and turn 'em along to help on the trench. I'm not denying, Clancy, that I've a notion what the sap is for, although I'm supposed to know nothing of it; but I don't care if the sap is made, and I do care that the trench is. Now do you think I had better stop them on the sap, or can the party in the trench put a bit more ginger into it?"

"I'll just step along the trench again, sorr," said Clancy anxiously, "and I don't think you'll be having need to grumble again."

He stepped along the trench, and he left an extraordinary increase of energy behind him as he went.

"And what use might it be to make it any deeper?" grumbled McRory. "Sure it's deep enough for all we need it."

"May be," said Sergeant Clancy, with bitter sarcasm, "it's yourself that'll just be stepping up to the Colonel and saying friendly like to him: 'Prickles, me lad, it's deep enough we've dug to lave us get out to our German Gineral. 'Tisn't for you we're digging this trench,' you'll be saying, ''tis for our own pleasure entirely.' You might just let me know what the Colonel says to that."

"There's some talk," he said, a little further down the line, "of our being relieved from here to-morrow afternoon. I've told you what the Little Lad was saying about turning the sap party in to help here. It's pretty you'd look clearing out to-morrow and leaving another battalion to come in to take over your new trench and your new sap and your German Gineral and the gold in his britches pocket together." And with that parting shaft he moved on.

For the rest of that day and all that night work moved at speed, and when the O.C. made his tour of inspection the following morning he was as delighted as he was amazed at the work done--and that, as he told the Adjutant, was saying something. Up to now he had known nothing of the sap, merely expressing satisfaction--again mingled with amazement--when he saw the entrance to the sap, lightly roofed in with boards for a couple of yards and shut off beyond that by a curtain of sacking, and was told that the men were amusing themselves making a bomb-proof dug-out.

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.

The Adjutant whistled softly. "This," he said, and nodded again and again to the plain below, "this looks like business--at last."

"Yes," said the Colonel, "at last. It's going to be a very different story this time, when we begin to push things."

"Hark at the guns," said the Adjutant, and both stood silent a moment listening to the long, deep, rolling thunder that boomed steady and unbroken as surf on a distant beach. "And they're our guns too, mostly," went on the Adjutant. "I suppose we're firing more shells in an ordinary trench-war-routine day now than we dared fire in a month this time last year. Last year we were short of shells, the year before we were short of guns and shells and men. Now hear the guns and look down there at a few of the men."

Through the still air rose from below them the shrill crow of a farmyard rooster, the placid mooing of a cow, the calls and laughter of some romping children.

But the two on the hillside had no ear for these sounds of peace. They heard only that distant sullen boom of the rumbling guns, the throbbing foot-beats of the marching battalions below them, the plop-plopping hoofs and rattling wheels of wagons passing on their way up to the firing line with food for the guns.

"Our turn coming," said the Adjutant--"at last."

"Yes," the Colonel said, and repeated grimly--"at last."

End of Project Gutenberg's Action Front, by Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)