“Do you think we shall be going out soon, sir?” Peter asked the stock-question from pure habit.
Colonel Andrews began to talk the other side of war, the difficulties of finding seasoned wood for rifle-stocks, the lack of dyes for khaki. His outlook, if limited, was—except on the question of machine-guns—extraordinarily sound: and Peter, when their homeward way separated in the rain at the cross-roads by the cycle-shop, found difficulty in realizing how so decent a chap could have let himself be misled into taking Locksley-Jones for Adjutant. . . .
Turning into the Camp, Peter could see immediately that something must be wrong. Although it was nearly one o’clock in the morning, lights glowed in most of the officers’ tents. Across the blurr and rain drizzle of the parade-ground, under the acetylene flares by the latrine-buckets, figures moved, lanterns swayed. He heard voices calling.
“What’s up?” he asked the sentry.
“Trouble over in the lines, I’m afraid, sir. They do say as ’ow ‘D’ Company’s flooded out altogether.”
Peter stumbled across the darkness towards his own lines; nearly collided with a dripping figure in gum-boots. A torch flashed in his face.
“That you, P.J.?” said Bromley’s voice. “Been out on the tiles, and come to have a look round at the picnic?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing much. Only most of the Camp flooded; about twenty tents blown down; and half the men soaked to the skin. ‘A’ and ‘D’ have got it worst. Hark at Mosely’s voice.”
They heard it, raised like a foghorn above the din: “Now, then, you chaps, form up, will you? Never mind your blasted blankets.”