"Yes," said I, glancing at K. "Oh, yes, if—"
"Only smart for the time bein'," our sub. assured me. "Make you weep a bit!" Here from the dingy box he fished a particularly vicious-looking bomb and fell to poking at it with a screwdriver. I immediately stepped back. So did K. The Major pulled his moustache and flicked a chunk of mud from his boot with his whip.
"Er—I suppose that thing's all right?" he enquired.
"Oh, yes, quite all right, sir, quite all right," nodded the sub., using the screwdriver as a hammer. "Only wants a little fixin'."
As I watched that deadly thing, for the second time I felt distinctly unhappy; however, the refractory pin, or whatever it was, being fixed to his satisfaction, our sub. led the way out of the dingy hut and going some few paces ahead, paused.
"I'm goin' to give you a liquid-fire bomb first!" said he. "Watch!"
He drew back his hand and hurled the bomb. Almost immediately there was a shattering report and the air was full of thick, grey smoke and yellow flame, smoke that rolled heavily along the ground towards us, flame that burned ever fiercer, fiery yellow tongues that leapt from the sand here and there, that writhed in the wind-gusts, but never diminished.
"Stoop down!" cried the sub., suiting the action to word, "stoop down and get a mouthful of that smoke—makes you jolly sick and unconscious in no time if you get enough of it. Top-hole bomb, that—what!"
Then he brought us where those yellow flames leapt and hissed; some of these he covered with wet sand, and lo! they had ceased to be; but the moment the sand was kicked away up they leapt again fiercer than ever.
"We use 'em for bombing Boche dug-outs now!" said he; and remembering the dug-outs I had seen, I could picture the awful fate of those within, the choking fumes, the fire-scorched bodies! Truly the exponents of Frightfulness have felt the recoil of their own vile methods.