Three hours later, after a final struggle with his “returns,” Vickers, dirty and dusty, grimed with smoke and ash, a stubble of beard on his chin and tired rings under his eyes, trudged to the mess dug-out for breakfast and tea—tea, hot tea, especially. He met the Colonel, and recounted briefly the various thousands of assorted shells—high explosive, shrapnel, lyddite, and so on—he had sent up to the gun-line during the night. He also recounted sorrowfully the night’s casualties amongst his dump party, and spoke with a little catch in his voice of his dead sergeant, “the best N.C.O. he’d ever known.”
“A good night’s work well done, Vickers,” said the Colonel quietly.
“A roaring trade, sir, as you said,” answered Vickers, with a thin smile. “And hark at ’em up there now,” and he nodded his head towards the distant gun-line. They stood a moment in the sunshine at the top of the dug-out steps. Round them the heavies still thundered and crashed and cracked savagely, and from the gun line where the field guns worked the roar of sound came rolling and throbbing fiercely and continuously.
“They’ll pay back for what you got last night,” said the Colonel, “and some of them wouldn’t be able to do it but for your work last night.”
The ground under them trembled to the blast of a near-by heavy battery, the air vibrated again to the furious drumming fire that thundered back from the front lines.
“That’s some consolation,” said Vickers, “for my sergeant. Small profit and quick returns to their shells; the right sort of motto, that, for a roaring trade.”
The fire of the gun-line, rising to a fresh spasm of fury, fairly drowned the last of his words. “A proper roaring trade,” he repeated loudly, and nodded his head again in the direction of the sound.