“How did you manage to get here so quickly?” asked Sandiland.
“Well, sir, I happened to be reporting for duty at Headquarters just when your ’phone message got through. The Colonel told me to send my horses back, and come right along with the guide. He said you’d fix me somehow till my blankets arrived.”
Now a Canadian does not talk about his “blankets,” he uses the English word “kit.” Nor does he—as a general rule—smoke granulated tobacco from those looped bags which are referred to as “sacks” in the display-ads of the various firms whose communal address is 111 Fifth Avenue, New York. Also, he strongly objects to walking half-a-mile of sodden ground, trenched and littered with remnants of barbed wire, in his spurs.
These details flashed subconsciously through the mind of Peter Jameson, as the three of them sat together in the crumbling trench: but he was very tired, his cough troubled him—and anyway it was none of his business. There were, he knew from experience, many such “Canadians” among the men who originally joined Kitchener’s Army.
“But how in the devil,” thought Peter, “did he manage to get a commission?” . . .
“Number two gun ready for action, sorr,” called Sergeant Abernethy’s voice from above them.
Sandiland called back: “Splendid, Sergeant. We’ll come and have a look at it.”
The three officers scrambled up out of the trench into the noise of the night; picked their way across to the battery. It was pitch-dark with a drizzle of rain; so that the newcomer could see nothing except the occasional crimson of gun-flashes, and the circle of Sandiland’s torch as it danced over yellow pock-marked ground. They jumped a deep crumbling trench; skirted the lip of a huge shell-crater; came suddenly upon the resurrected gun.
By the vague glimmer of a hurricane lamp, men were still at work, disinterring the buried ammunition, wiping the brass cases, stacking them beside the gun-wheels. An improvised tent of tarpaulin, slung between four posts, provided the only overhead cover; a few sandbags had been piled in front of the shield.
Sergeant-Major Cresswell, a stout melancholy man with watery brown eyes and a waxed moustache, whom the death of Lindsay had summoned from the waggon-lines, saluted Sandiland, and said: