"Where are you putting the earth?" asked the Sapper after watching for a while.
"Round corner, in a 'ole." The speaker pointed with his pipe, and the subject dropped.
The officer turned away smiling slightly, and decided on the inspection of the rum jar. The answer was clear and succinct, even if not couched in the language of the old army discipline. He inspected the hole, and, finding it was at the back of the trench, in a crater that was formed nightly by German minenwerfer, and that more earth there not only would not block the trench but, mirabile dicta, would be an actual advantage, he passed on and shortly came to a passage leading out of the front of the trench.
The passage was labelled Sap No. 130, and presented exactly the same appearance as the boyaux which ran out of the support line to the front trench. Only when one got into it did the difference become apparent, for whereas the boyaux had continued until finally opening into a new trench, the sap was a cul-de-sac, and finished abruptly in a little covered-in recess built into a miniature mountain of newly-thrown-up earth. And this great, tumbled mass of soil was the near lip of Vesuvius crater—blown up half way between the two front lines.
Over the top of the mountain there was no passage. A man standing or crawling there in daytime would have been in full view of German snipers at a range of forty yards; while had he accomplished it in safety, he would have slithered down the farther side into a great cavity shaped like an egg-cup, at the bottom of which a pool of dirty, stagnant water was slowly forming. Moreover, if we imagine the man continuing his journey and climbing up the other side, he would run the gauntlet of the English snipers as he topped the farther lip, before reaching the German sap which ran out in just such a similar cul-de-sac to the one already described.
Thus are craters consolidated; each side holds the lip nearest to them, and hurls curses and bombs at his opponents on the other. The distance between the sapheads is perhaps twenty or twenty-five yards, instead of the hundred odd of the parent fire-trenches; and any closer acquaintanceship is barred by the egg-cup crater, which stretches between them.
"Keep down, sir—well down. Lot of sniping to-day." A sergeant of the South Loamshires whispered hoarsely to the Sapper as he reached the end of the sap—it is etiquette to whisper in a sap. Three men inside the recess were drinking tea with the calmness born of long custom, while lying on his side, with a periscope to his eye, was Jackson, the subaltern.
"Anything fresh, Jacko?" muttered the Sapper, crouching down beside him.
"Yes—I think they're coming closer with their left sap round the crater.
Their periscope seems to be nearer than it was yesterday."
"Let's have a look." The two changed position, and the Captain turned the periscope gently round until he got the exact direction. Absolute stillness brooded over the ground he could see; a few rough strands of wire straggled about, and disappeared into the great mound of earth that formed the débris of the crater.