“Dig out Chocolate!” and they all rushed out utterly surprised by the announcement of such a job.
The bricks were scattered with a few blows of the shovels, the beams raised, and the place cleared away.
With all the ease of a circus horse who has been playing dead, Chocolate stretched out his front feet, then his hind ones, balanced himself two or three times, took a spring, and without the slightest hurry stood up, shaking himself all over like a dog coming out of the water.
There were a few scratches on his hide, but it was an old hide, hard and tanned, which resists everything. Nothing broken! Brave Chocolate, come on! The men all look at him, admire him, and fondle him. He seemed somewhat surprised by such manifestations of great affection.
And without a care in the world for the bombardment which was beginning again, he went to the nearby pond and drank deeply.
CHAPTER VIII
THE AEROPLANE
Dawn had just broken. Some of the boldest of the men in the echelon were already up, rubbing down their horses and adjusting the breast collars. At daylight we had to go a long way to exchange the pack-saddles for munition-wagons.
This has been the way from the start. The companies of machine guns, probably even more than the other branches of service, although I don’t know, are experiment stations on which they try one sort of gear one day and another the next. First it is a round shield, then a square shield, and then a periscope. We adopted the Wikers saddle, only to have it replaced with the Hotchkiss. And we had scarcely put it in service than it was withdrawn to give us ammunition wagons.