“Very well, sir”—chaffed Peter; and stumbled off, Garton leading, to his dug-out. . . .
Sandiland and Henry made their way towards the telephone-pit. “He’s an obstinate cove, is P.J.,” confided the battery-commander.
“He looks a mighty sick one,” replied the “Canadian.”
§ 3
The “dug-out” towards which Peter and Garton stumbled was a coffin-shaped hole burrowed in the soil, roofed with a piece of corrugated iron and one layer of sandbags. A mackintosh ground-sheet, supported on a wooden beam, prolonged this improvised roof; provided some protection from the rain which drove in at the “door”—a narrow entrance reached by three “steps,” mostly mud. Down these, the pair slithered.
Garton lit a match, revealing Peter’s valise, supported on two ammunition-boxes and a stolen stretcher. The mud-walls of the coffin touched the valise on either side, so that Garton had to scramble over it before he could light “the candles”—one guttering dip stuck on a wooden shelf above the head of the “bedstead.” A pool of slime on the “floor” served for carpet.
“You’d better turn in, Garton,” said Peter, sitting down heavily between the projecting stretcher-handles. “I’m afraid you’ll have to bring me my tea at half-past four. Rather a change from H.Q. at Neuve Eglise, what? Hope your lady friend there still writes to you, Garton?”
The fair-haired Yorkshireman blushed violently; bent to unlace his master’s heavy boots.
“Don’t bother about that, I’ll do ’em myself.”
But Driver Garton went on with his work; and as his muddy fingers fumbled at the muddy laces, he thought: “Poor old P.J.! He won’t last much longer. Never saw a man look so ill in my life.”