In front of them all was quiet.
The whole air trembled with the roar of firing, but perhaps the most trying thing to the nerves was the sudden transition from brilliant glare to black darkness in the momentary intervals between the extinguishing of one star-shell and the bursting of the next. For an instant they would see the line of their trench standing out as clear as at noonday, with the glint of bayonets above the sandbags, and then it would be blotted out, to be lit up again the next moment.
When they had crawled to within fifty yards of it, Harry Hawke thrust two fingers into his gash of a mouth and let loose a piercing whistle.
"Now, Tiddler, pipe up!" he shouted, and their two voices rose in a discordant rendering of a popular trench song, their rifles waving wildly the while.
At any other time Dennis would have been constrained to laugh at the incongruity of their choice, but Harry Hawke knew what he was doing, and that no German could have imitated the Cockney twang in which they brayed their chant at the top of their strident voices.
"There's a silver linin'—froo the dyark clard shinin',
Turn the dyark clard inside art till the boys come 'ome!"
they howled, and as a fresh star-shell lit up the trench they saw a man in khaki thrust his head and shoulders over the topmost bag and look under his hand in their direction.
"Cut it out, 'Arry—there's Ginger Bill, and 'e's 'eard!" cried Tiddler, jumping to his feet. "Run for all you're worth, sir!"
His companions needed no second bidding, and in another minute they were clambering up the outer face of the parapet and falling in a heap on to the fire step inside.
"Well, I'm blowed!" said Ginger Bill, as they picked themselves up.