"How we going in?"
"Straight across," said the sniper.
"Ver-re-well, young-fella-me-lad, if you can stand it I can," said the youngster, for he knew full well that to go from there to Sniper's Barn in broad daylight meant to expose himself to observation from "Germany," only about five hundred yards away, and with a fat chance of playing the part of "the sniper sniped."
Without another word they departed. The sentry on guard at the crossing of the creek volunteered the cheerful hope that they'd get pinked before they got across the field, upon which the boy assured him that he would be drinking real beer in London when the pessimistic sentry was "pushing up the daisies" in Flanders. Crossing the open field to a hedge, they slipped into a shallow remnant of an old French trench, just in time to escape a snapping bullet which was aimed about one second too late. From here they crawled carefully along the hedge, bullets cutting intermittently through the bare branches above them and, at last, came to a small opening that gave entrance to a garden, about one hundred yards from a group of demolished farm buildings. Here they rested for a few minutes, while the bullets continued to "fan" the hedge up which they had come and which led to the buildings.
The boy--"Bou" the other called him--worked his way along the ground to an old cherry tree and was about to lift up a sort of trap-door at its roots when the other stopped him.
"Never mind the gun," he said, "we'll just wait here until they do their morning strafe and then go into the buildings. I want to try for a few of them over on Piccadilly to-day and you can't use a machine gun for that. You'll simply have to be the observer, that's all."
Bou came back, lit a cigarette which the other promptly extinguished and then subsided.
"What you think you're going to do; shoot from the farm?" Bou couldn't possibly keep quiet any longer.
"Sure, Mike; why not?"