Pug broke in. “There’s no orders to retire,” he said. “There’s no orders to retire,” and poked and turned his head, peering at one after the other of them. “We carn’t retire when there ain’t no orders,” waggling his pantomimic head triumphantly as if he had completely settled the matter. But their portion of trench continued to cave in alarmingly. A monster shell falling close out on their right front completed the destruction. The trench wall shivered, slid, caught and held, slid again, and its face crumbled and fell in. The four saw it giving and scrambled clear. They were almost on the upper ground level now, but the hurried glances they threw round showed nothing but the churned up ground, the drifting curling smoke-wreaths, tinted black and green and yellow and dirty white, torn whirling asunder every few moments by the fresh shell bursts which in turn poured out more billowing clouds. No man of the Stonewalls, no man at all, could be seen, and the four were smitten with a sudden sense of loneliness, of being left abandoned in this end-of-the-world inferno. Then the man Jim noticed something and pointed. Dimly through the smoke to their left they saw one man running half doubled up, another so stooped that he almost crawled. Both wore kilts, and both moved forward. In an instant they disappeared, but the sight of them brought new life and vigor to the four.
“The Jocks that was on our left,” shouted Pug, “gettin’ outer the trench into shell-holes. Good enough, too. Come on.”
They did not have far to seek for a shell-hole. The ground was covered with them, the circle of one in many cases cutting the circle of the next. There were many nearer available, but Pug sheered to his left and ran for the place he had seen the two Highlanders disappear, and the others followed. There were plenty of bullets flying, but in the noise of shell-fire the sound of their passing was drowned, except the sharp, angry hiss of the nearer ones and the loud smacks of those that struck the ground about them.
They had less than a dozen yards to cover, but in that short space two of them went down. Jim’s companion was struck by a shell splinter and killed instantly. Pug, conscious only of a violent blow on the side, fell, rolling from the force of the stroke. But he was up and running on before Kentucky had well noticed him fall, and when they reached the shell-hole and tumbled into it almost on top of the two Highlanders there, Pug, cautiously feeling round his side, discovered his haversack slashed and torn, its contents broken and smashed flat. “Fust time I’ve been glad o’ a tin o’ bully,” he shouted, exhibiting a flattened tin of preserved meat. “But I s’pose it was the biscuits that was really the shell-proof bit.”
“Are you hurt at all?” said Kentucky. “Not a ha’porth,” said Pug. “Your pal was outed though, wasn’t ’e, chum?”
The other man nodded. “... cross the neck ... ’is ’ead too ... as a stone....”
“You’re no needin’ them,” said one of the Highlanders suddenly. “It’s only tear-shells—no the real gas.”
The others noticed then that they were wearing the huge goggles that protect the eyes from “tear,” or lachrymatory shells, and the three Stonewalls exchanged their own helmets for the glasses with huge relief.
“What lot are you?” said one of the Scots. “Oh, ay; you’re along on oor right, aren’t ye?”