"Better lie down for a minute," suggested the Engineer.
Ayling, who had been struggling with a strong inclination to do so for some time, promptly complied.
"Just like the Crystal Palace on a benefit night!" observed his guide admiringly, as the landscape was lit up with a white glare. "Now you can see your position beautifully. You can fire obliquely in this direction, and then do a first-class enfilade if the trenches get rushed."
"I see," said Ayling, surveying the position with real interest. He was beginning to enjoy selecting gun-emplacements which really mattered. It was a change from nine months of "eye-wash."
When the German star-shell had spent itself they crossed the road, to the rear of the redoubt, and marked the other two emplacements—in comparative safety now.
"The only trouble about this place," said Ayling, as he surveyed the last position, "is that my fire will be masked by that house with the clump of trees beside it."
The Engineer produced a small note-book, and wrote in it by the light of a convenient star-shell.
"Right-o!" he said. "I'll have the whole caboodle pushed over for you by to-morrow night. Anything else?"
Ayling began to enjoy himself. After you have spent nine months in an unprofitable attempt to combine practical machine-gun tactics with a scrupulous respect for private property, the realisation that you may now gratify your destructive instincts to the full comes as a welcome and luxurious shock.
"Thanks," he said. "You might flatten out that haystack, too."