Private Longstaffe, wrenching frantically at jammed breechbolt, heard a whirr as of homing pigeons over his head; was aware of white smoke puffs bursting among the gray figures all along the slope in front of him. . . . The breechbolt shot home at last, but when he lifted the rifle to his shoulder, peered through the V of the backsight, the gray figures had disappeared.
PART SEVENTEEN
THE SUICIDE CLUB
§ 1
At midnight between the 26th and 27th of September, 1915, two men faced each other across a chequered French table-cloth in the bare salle à manger of an estaminet at Beuvry.
An orderly stood outside the door, an orderly with tiny highly-polished grenades on his shoulder-straps, and below the grenades two winking brass letters—the second of the letters being “G.” Outside the estaminet, a car waited; and past the car filed steady columns of tall men. These men, too, bore a winking “G” on each shoulder-strap of their excessively clean tunics.
Said the first of the two at the table, a broad-shouldered quiet man, rather full in the face, steady of eye, big of brown moustache—a man who wore the crossed swords and star of a Major General: “And so we have the job of cleansing their Augean stable for them. As far as I can make out, the position is this.” He spread a big white map on the table; indicated with one finger a semi-circle drawn in thick blue chalk. “Whether the 9th can hang on to Fosse Eight or not, is pretty doubtful. You already know the political situation”—he emphasized the words a trifle scornfully—“with regard to Hill 70. . . . The rest of the line, as far as the Hulluch Road, P. must look after. Now, what about those guns? . . .”
His companion, a saturnine aquiline Brigadier General of Artillery, well over six-foot, glass in his eye, drew a creased plan from his pocket; spread it over the table-cloth. As he did so, his long hands betrayed intense concentration; a concentration not belied by the clipped phrases in which he spoke.
“I’ve seen both the Brigades, sir,” he began, “and as they apparently know very little of the ground, I’ve arranged to take over both Artilleries myself. Our own can’t be up for three days. The Southdown batteries”—he pointed to the map—“are marked in red; the Northdown in blue.”
“Too far back,” commented the other, scrutinizing the coloured dots, the shaded arcs which showed their approximate ranges.
“They seem to have done the best they could under the circumstances.”