"He meant that we're not machine made, as the Germans are, by all accounts," replied Harry. "I say, I'm jolly glad he let me go too: I'm getting quite fat with doing nothing."
They talked over their plans together. Obviously the safest direction in which to approach the enemy was towards the large pond. This was an irregular oval in shape, and the Germans had not closely followed its curve in cutting their trenches, for, if they had done so, it would have exposed them to enfilading fire from the British. They had carried their advanced trench close up to the border of the pond on each side, then run communicating trenches at right angles from front to rear, and there dug a straight trench along the breadth of the pond, about a hundred yards in the rear of their first alignment. The wire entanglements in front of the pond, facing the British, were not so elaborate as on the rest of their line, from which the inference was that the water was too deep to be waded.
Just before midnight the three men crept stealthily out of their trench, armed only with their bayonets, crawled under the barbed wire, and wriggled forward towards the pond. It was slow and tiring work, for the ground was much cut up by shell fire, and littered with fragments of shells, empty tins, and other rubbish. There was a certain advantage in the unevenness, in that it gave cover; but it also contained an element of danger, because there was a risk of their displacing something as they proceeded, and they knew that the slightest noise would provoke a fusillade from the enemy.
The moon was not up, but the sky was spangled with stars, by whose feeble light they were able to distinguish objects on the ground within ten or a dozen paces. They heard the Germans talking and laughing in their trenches, and here and there a slight radiance marked the places where they had candles or lamps. Foot by foot they crawled on, Kenneth leading the way towards the angle of the trenches on the left.
At last he came to a stop within a few feet of the parapet. The three men lay flat on the ground. For some moments Kenneth was not able to distinguish anything from the general murmur, but presently he realised that one man was reading aloud to the rest from a German newspaper. "The blockade of England. Great German success in the North Sea. An English merchantman of 245 tons laden with bricks was torpedoed in the North Sea yesterday, and seriously damaged. The starvation of England proceeds satisfactorily."
"What, do the English eat bricks?" asked one simple soul.
There was a laugh.
"They have good teeth! Look at this picture," said another.
"If the English bricks are harder than our war bread I pity them," said a third. "We needn't cry 'God punish England' any more."
"Is there any news of sinking a grain ship?" asked a voice.