“I’ve just been down a mine-shaft with that R.E. officer, I forget his name—the fellow with the glasses.”
“I know,” I replied; “I don’t know his name either, but it doesn’t matter. Did you go right down, and along the galleries? How frightfully interesting. I always mean to go, but somehow don’t. Well, what about it?”
“By Jove,” said Clark. “It’s wonderful. It’s all as white as snow, dazzling white. I never realised that before, although you see these R.E.’s coming out all covered with white chalk-dust. First of all you go down three or four ladders; it’s awfully tricky work at the sort of halts on the way down, because there’s a little platform, and very often the ladder goes down a different side of the shaft after one of these halts; and if you don’t notice, you lower your foot to go on down the same side as you were going before, and there’s nothing there. The first time I did this and looked down and saw a dim light miles below, it quite gave me a turn. It’s a terrible long way down, and of course you go alone; the R.E. officer went first, and got ahead of me.”
“Have some more tea, and go on.”
“Well, down there it’s fearfully interesting. I didn’t go far up the gallery where they’re working, because you can’t easily pass along; but the R.E. officer took me along a gallery that is not being worked, and there, all alone, at the end of it was a man sitting. He was simply sitting, listening. Then I listened through his stethoscope thing ...”
“I know,” I interposed. It is an instrument like a doctor’s stethoscope, and by it you can hear underground sounds a hundred yards away as clearly as if they were five yards off.
“... and I could hear the Boche working as plainly as anything. Good heavens, it sounded about a yard off. Yet they told me it was forty yards. By Jove, it was weird. ‘Pick ... pick ... pick.’ I thought it must be our fellows really, but theirs made a different sound, and not a bit the same. But, you know, that fellow sitting there alone ... as we went away and left him, he looked round at us with staring eyes just like a hunted animal. To sit there for hours on end, listening. Of course, while you hear them working, it’s all right, they won’t blow. But if you don’t hear them! My God, I wouldn’t like to be an R.E. It’s an awful game.”
“By Jove,” said Edwards. “How fearfully interesting! Is it cold down there?”
“Fairly. I really didn’t notice.”
“I must go down,” I said. “We always laugh at these R.E.’s for looking like navvies, and for going about without gas-helmets or rifles. But really they are wonderful men. It’s awful being liable to be buried alive any moment. Somehow death in the open is far less terrible. Ugh! Do you remember that R.E., Teddy, we saw running down the Old Kent Road? It was that night the Boche blew the mine in the Quarry. Jove, Clark, that was a sight. I was just going up from Trafalgar Square, when I heard a running, and there was a fellow, great big brawny fellow, naked to the waist, and grey all over; and someone had given him his equipment and rifle in a hurry, and he’d got his equipment over his bare skin! The men were fearfully amused. ‘R.E.,’ they said, and smiled. But, by God, there was a death look in that man’s eyes. He’d been down when the Boche blew their mine, and as near as possible buried alive. No, it’s a rotten game.”