He was suffering untold agonies and they knew it; but they knew also that he was right; and Dennis made a sign to Hawke and Tiddler, who saluted the young lieutenant as they left him.
Keeping just within the fringe of the wood, Dennis shouldering the gun, while Hawke and Tiddler carried the field mount and the spare magazines, the adventurous three soon reached the angle in front of the ridge.
The stump of a well-grown beech stood up there, towering above the ground twenty feet or more. Its crest had been carried away by a shell, but one stout branch jutted out like the arm of a gallows; and Harry Hawke had a brain wave.
"'Arf a mo, sir," he said, laying his wallet down. And the next moment he was clambering up the tree until he reached the bough, where he supported himself for a minute or two on his elbows, taking stock of the enemy.
When he came sliding down again his eyes were dancing, and his voice was husky.
"If we could only get the gun up there, sir," he whispered excitedly, "the rest's as easy as kiss your hand. You can see the trench and the head of the bloke what's working that tac-tac of theirs. Have a look for yourself, sir." And Dennis made the climb, finding it as Hawke had said.
He saw something else, too—C Company now creeping through the wood, and taking possession of the cover along its northern edge, which told him that the battalion had arrived.
When he descended, after a careful reconnaissance, he found that Hawke and Tiddler had already anticipated his decision, and were buckling their straps together.
"Ain't it a little bit of all right?" grinned Hawke. "That there bough might have been made for it, and foothold on that other branch underneath. She weighs twenty-five pounds; but if you think the strap of your map-case will hold, sir, it's as good as done."
Dennis slipped the map from his shoulder, and, buckling the strap end round the muzzle of the Lewis, Tiddler held the weapon up to the full extent of his arms while Dennis, taking the other end of the improvised line in his hand, climbed up the beech again.