"Cheeky brutes!" I shouted, and, observing that our batmen were hastily loading their rifles, ran for my revolver, determined to fire something into the air.
"It's like us," growled Monty, "to land reinforcements under the very eyes of the enemy aeroplanes—" He paused, as though a new idea had struck him. "Rupert, my boy, did you say that the Special Order about holding Helles was extensively published?"
"Yes, rather. Hung in the very traverses of the trenches."
"I thought so." He nodded with irritating mysteriousness. "What fools you and I are! Stop firing at those Taubes. Or fire wide of them—fire wide."
"Why?"
"Because our Staff will want them to get home and report all that they've seen. That's why."
Of a truth Monty was quite objectionable, if he was excited with some secret discovery, and thought it amusing not to disclose it. And when, later that afternoon, a message came round saying that irresponsible units were not to fire at hostile aircraft, owing to the danger of spent bullets, he bragged like any pernicious schoolboy.
"I told you so. O Rupert, my silly little juggins, you're as dense as a vegetable marrow. I mean, you're a very low form of life."
§2
The weather broke. Two days of merciless rain turned the trenches into lanes of red clayey mud, and the floor of the Gully Ravine into a canal of stagnant brown water. And one evening Monty returned from his visitations, limping badly. He had slipped heavily, as he paddled through the ankle-deep mud, and had hurt his back. I sent him at once to bed, and on the following morning announced that I was going to no less terrifying a place than Brigade Headquarters to insist on his being given a pair of trench-waders. He enjoined me not to be an ass, and I rebuked him severely for speaking to his doctor like that, and, going out of the dug-out, broke off all communication with one so rude.