[CHAPTER LVII]
HOT OVENS
Jack was back, in the best of health and spirits.
"I'm almost sorry I didn't join the navy," he said, as he trudged with Jim through the mud to the Picket House, to see how things had gone on in his absence. "They do keep things clean, anyway."
"That's the only place where they have any fun nowadays," he said, as they stood looking down on the lines and zigzags, creeping nearer and nearer to the town, and pointed to a deep gully which ran up from the head of the Admiralty Harbour and separated the British position from the French.
"The Ovens," said Jim. "Couldn't we go down some night and see some of it?"
"Any night you like when I'm not on duty."
"Why not to-night? You won't start work till to-morrow, I suppose."
"All right! To-night! The 50th are down there, and there are some capital fellows among them."
And that was how it happened that, for the sake of a little fun, or, in other, words, the chance of a brush with the enemy, the boys found themselves that night stumbling along the deep trench which zigzaged down from Chapman's Battery towards the Green Hills and so into the deep gully which ran up into the plateau from the head of Admiralty Harbour in Sebastopol. The sides of the gully contained numerous caves formed by the decay of the softer strata in the rocks, and these caves had for some time past been the stakes for which small parties on each side played sharp little war-games, and paid at times with their lives.