"Captain Wagstaffe! Hurry up!"
Presently the bell rings, and the Captain gets to business.
"That you, Wagstaffe?" he inquires cheerily. "Look here, we're going to fire Practice Seven, Table B,—snap-shooting. I want you to raise all the targets for six seconds, just for sighting purposes. Do you understand?"
Here the bell rings continuously for ten seconds. Nothing daunted, the
Captain tries again.
"That you, Wagstaffe? Practice Seven, Table B!"
"T'chk, t'chk!" replies Captain Wagstaffe.
"Begin by raising all the targets for six seconds. Then raise them six times for five seconds each.—no, as you were! Raise them five times for six seconds each. Got that? I say, are you there? What's that?"
"Przemysl" replies the telephone—or something to that effect. "Czestochowa! Krsyszkowice! Plock!"
The Captain, now on his mettle, continues:—
"I want you to signal the results on the rear targets as the front ones go down. After that we will fire—oh, curse the thing!"