“Come on then.”
They climbed the fence at the back of the garden; stumbled across the colliery tram-lines; followed a red wire up the gritty front of the huge slag-cone. Light was just breaking, a glimmer of dawn over cloudy skies. Not a breath of wind stirred anywhere. “Hot work, sir,” commented the telephonist.
“Damned hot,” said Peter.
They made a flat platform of slag running round the peak of the cone; followed it half way round. “Going to observe from outside, sir?” “Yes. This’ll do. Connect up, will you?”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Seabright opened his telephone case; drove the earth pin into the slag; connected it to his instrument; scraped the insulation from the red wire they had been following; screwed it home; began to buzz.
“··-· -··- -·· (F. X. D.)” buzzed Gunner Seabright “··-· -··- -·· (F. X. D.) Hallo there? Dugout? Is that you Pirbright? Then why the yell don’t you answer quicker?” As he had only called twice, the question was pure swank. Peter tested the line; wandered off round the Fosse.
Already it was alive. Officers everywhere, some ensconced at the end of deep burrows, peering out over the plain; some clambering up the pathways at the back; some standing about at the mouths of their caves; and at the very top, thirty feet above Peter’s head, among a perfect jumble of wires, two Frenchmen—operators for the heavy battery just visible on the plain below, gesticulating and shouting at their strange-looking telephone.
“Mais non,” Peter heard, “mais non. On ne voit rien. Rien je vous dis. . . . Alors dans une demi-heure, mon Commandant.”
“Their Major’s evidently not in a hurry,” thought Peter.