"Somethin' doin'," Bill repeated, as he joined the throng down below, some thirty-five feet under the surface, and stumbled in to find a seat in the dug-out, about which sat or lounged, perhaps, a dozen men facing the centre, where, perched on a kerosene tin, a single army-pattern candle spluttered and glimmered.
"Oh, aye!" answered one, as he pulled at his pipe. "Sounds like it! Shouldn't wonder!"
They listened. Each man, as if by habit, lifted his head and stared hard at the spluttering candle.
"Yep!" Larry interjected, pulling his hat from his head and rubbing his fingers through his hair. "It do sound something like a ruction. This here gunnin's been goin' on this four hours. Say, Bill, what's it doin' upstairs?"
"Aye, what's it doin'?"
They turned their eyes upon the young soldier, and then sat there still staring at the fluttering flame of the candle, listening, listening to the thud, thud, thud, the almost continuous roar of distant guns—damped down, as it were, by their deeply entrenched position, yet a roar for all that—and listening to the distant reverberation, which shook the earth and sent tremors through the dug-out.
For hours, indeed, German guns had been thundering; for hours shells of every variety, but mainly gas shells, had been crashing into the British defences, and crashing upon roads, levelling all that was left of the puny walls of one-time pleasant hamlets, creating more destruction in an area already almost utterly destroyed by previous bombardments. And to those guns British guns made answer, till the roar made speaking well-nigh impossible even deep down there in that dug-out.
"Best get something to eat, boys," said the practical Jim, when a few minutes had passed in silence—that is, silence save for that interminable thud, the occasional whine of a shell scarcely perceptible deep down in the dug-out, and the deep rumbling of the earth caused by so many concussions. "It looks as if the Germans are coming on, and, that being so, the man who's got his waistcoat well lined will be ready for them. Ah! hear that one? That's an ammunition dump gone up! Hit direct, I shouldn't wonder."
They had been almost deafened by a rumbling roar, and sat for a while again in silence, then from an adjoining opening there emerged a tin-hatted, hairy individual bearing a dixie in one hand and a ladle in the other. It was the cook—a stalwart British Tommy, his muffler wound round his face, a cigarette between his lips, the very embodiment of coolness and nonchalance.