“Our light forces in an enterprise off the English coast put to flight a vastly superior strength of armed merchant cruisers escorted by destroyers. English fleet on coming to the rescue was compelled to withdraw, and our forces returned to harbour without further molestation.”
Every man to his own trade.
III. The Left Flank
The north-east wind carried the steady grumble of gunfire across the sand-dunes and far out to sea.
The foremost gun’s crew of a British destroyer stood huddled in the lee of the gun-shield with their duffle hoods pulled down over their foreheads. The sea was calm, and the stars overhead shone with frosty brilliance. A figure groped its way forward with a bowl of cocoa, and joined the group round the breech of the gun. They drank in turn, grunting as the warmth penetrated into their interiors.
The distant gunfire swelled momentarily. Above the horizon far ahead intermittent gleams marked the activity of searchlight and star-shell.
“Them’s our guns,” said one of the cocoa-drinkers. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his coat, and stared ahead. It never seemed to occur to any of them that they might equally well be German guns.
“That’s right,” confirmed the sight-setter. “There’s guns going like that for ’undreds an’ ’undreds of miles. Right away up from the sea. Me brother’s there—somewhere....” For a moment they ruminated over a mental picture of the sight-setter’s brother, a mud-plastered stoical atom, somewhere along those hundreds of miles of wire and bayonets that hedged civilisation and posterity from the Unnamable. “Switzerland to the sea,” said the speaker. He jerked the breech-lever absent-mindedly towards him, and closed it again with a little click.
“An’ then we takes on,” said a loading number. “Us an’ these ’ere.” He tapped the smooth side of a lyddite shell lying in the rack beside him.