“Thanks; we’ve plenty of troubles of our own,” Jim returned hastily. “Don’t you think we were dumping-ground for your rubbish for long enough?”
“You were a large, empty place, and you had to be peopled,” said Blake, grinning. “And a good many of them were very decent people, I believe.”
“Well, they might well be,” Jim responded—“you sent them out for stealing a sheep or a shirt or a medicine-bottle: one poor kid of six was sent out for life for stealing jam-tarts. Many excellent men must have begun life by stealing jam-tarts: I did, myself!”
“If you’re a sample of the after-effects, I don’t wonder we exported the other criminals early,” laughed Blake.
“Well, if any of their descendants grew into the chaps that landed at Gallipoli the other day, they were no bad asset,” said Anstruther. “By Jove, those fellows must be fighters, Linton! I wouldn’t care to have the job of holding them back.”
“I knew they’d fight,” said Jim briefly. Down in his quiet soul he was torn between utter pride in his countrymen, and woe that he had not been with them in that stern Gallipoli landing: the latter emotion firmly repressed. It had been the fight of his boyish dreams—wild charging, hand to hand work, a fleeing enemy: not like this hole-and-corner trench existence unseen by the unseen foe, with Death that could not be combated dropping from the sky. His old school-fellows had been at Gallipoli, and had “made good.” He ached to have been with them.
An orderly came up hurriedly. Anstruther tore open the note he carried.
“There’s word of an enemy attack,” he said crisply. “Get to your places—quick!”
The subalterns scattered along the trench, each to his platoon. They had already inspected the men, making sure that no detail of armament had been forgotten, and that rifles were all in order. Garrett, who commanded the machine-gun section, fled joyfully to the emplacement, his face like a happy child’s. The alarm ran swiftly up and down the trench: low, sharp words of command brought every man to his place, while the sentries, like statues, were glued to their peep-holes. Jim and Wally fingered their revolvers, scarcely able to realize that the time for using them had come at last. Field officers appeared, hurriedly scanning every detail of preparation, and giving a word of advice here and there.
“Thank ’eving, we’re going to have a look-in!” muttered a man in front of Jim: a grizzled sergeant with the two South African ribbons on his breast. “Steady there, young ’Awkins; don’t go meddlin’ with that trigger of yours. You’ll get a chanst of loosin’ off pretty soon.”