"Wolfgang, have you any shells available?"
"Yes, sir."
"How many?"
"Three."
"Good! Wake up Theresa's crew."
He then verified his calculations by his map.
The men, half awake, loaded the enormous gun. Heineker gave the order, and, shaking up everyone and everything, the shell started forth, hurtling through the night.
0275 Private Scott, then, who adored his wife and had accepted a post without honour for her sake, was sleeping peacefully in the bedroom of a mobilized Belgian professor: and Captain Reineker, whose wife no longer loved him, and whom he mistrusted, was striding furiously up and down amongst the frozen woods; and these two circumstances, widely apart from one another, were developed independently in an indifferent world.
Now the calculations of Reineker, like most calculations, went wrong. He was 400 yards out. His landmark was the church. From the church to the college was 400 yards. A light wind increased the deviation by 20 yards, and from that moment the Reineker and the Scott situation began to have points in common. At this particular point the chest of 0275 Private Scott received the full force of the .305 shell, and he was blown into a thousand bits, which, amongst other things, put an end to the Scott situation.
CHAPTER IX