"Cheer oh!" They clinked glasses. "I thought you were taking a commission."
"I am—very shortly. The colonel has recommended me for one, and I gather the powers that be approve. But in a way I'm sorry, you know. I've got a great pal in my section—who kept a whelk stall down in Whitechapel."
"They're the sort," laughed Jim. "The Cockney takes some beating."
"This bird's a flier. We had quite a cheery little show the other night, just him and me. About a week ago we were up in the trenches—bored stiff, and yet happy in a way, you know, when Master Boche started to register.[1] I suppose it was a new battery or something, but they were using crumps, not shrapnel. They weren't very big, but they were very close—and they got closer. You know that nasty droning noise, then the hell of an explosion—that great column of blackish yellow smoke, and the bits pinging through the air overhead."
"I do," remarked Jim tersely.
Vane laughed. "Well, he got a bracket; the first one was fifty yards short of the trench, and the second was a hundred yards over. Then he started to come back—always in the same line; and the line passed straight through our bit of the trench.
"''Ere, wot yer doing, you perishers? Sargint, go and stop 'em. Tell 'em I've been appointed purveyor of winkles to the Royal 'Ouse of the 'Un Emperor.' Our friend of the whelk stall was surveying the scene with intense disfavour. A great mass of smoke belched up from the ground twenty yards away, and he ducked instinctively. Then we waited—fifteen seconds about was the interval between shots. The men were a bit white about the gills—and, well the feeling in the pit of my tummy was what is known as wobbly. You know that feeling too?"
"I do," remarked Jim even more tersely.
Vane finished his drink. "Then it came, and we cowered. There was a roar like nothing on earth—the back of the trench collapsed, and the whole lot of us were buried. If the shell had been five yards short, it would have burst in the trench, and my whelk friend would have whelked no more."
Vane laughed. "We emerged, plucking mud from our mouths, and cursed. The Hun apparently was satisfied and stopped. The only person who wasn't satisfied was the purveyor of winkles to the Royal 'Ouse. He brooded through the day, but towards the evening he became more cheerful.