"That noise. Sounds like a party coming along the communication trench!"
The talk was in tense whispers, and the listening was now of the same tenseness. Two khaki-clad Sammies stood on the alert in the muddy ditch, dignified by the title, "trench," and tried to pierce the darkness that was like a pall of black velvet over everything.
"Hear it?" inquired he who had first spoken.
"I somedings hears, too," spoke a guttural voice, with a foreign accent. "Might not it perhaps be—"
"Cut that talk, Iggy!" sharply commanded the first speaker. "Do you want the lieutenant dropping in on us!" And Corporal Robert Dalton cautiously moved nearer his fellow non-com., Sergeant Franz Schnitzel.
"Yes, not so loud," advised Schnitzel, who, in spite of his Teutonic name, was a thorough American, speaking with no trace of German accent. "Don't forget that the Boches may have listening parties out right in front of this trench, even though they may have information that we're going to rush 'em just before dawn."
"But what is that noise?" went on Bob. "It sounds like the relief coming, and yet we can't be going to be relieved so near the zero hour. It's impossible."
"Him one big word is," sighed Iggy, trying to adjust his Polish tongue to the strange language called English. "But thinks me nothing is like him in dis war!"
"Nothing is like what?" asked Schnitzel, the talk now being reduced to whispers on the part of all three.
"Him wot you said—repossible," said the Polish lad.