"Bravo!" said Bubb, sticking his head over. But he pulled it back quickly, for a bullet ripped a sandbag beside him, and a handful of clay and chalk was slapped into his face.
"Gawd, that's a bloomin' poultice," he muttered, ducking down and wiping the grit from his eyes. "It 'asn't knocked my 'ead off, but I feels as if it 'as.... I'm not goin' to look over again till the whistle's blown."
Bowdy Benners placed a mirror on a bayonet and held it over the trench. Looking in it he could see the field in front, the barbed wire entanglements, the shell-holes, the German trench on which the shells were falling, gouging out the occupants. And the tanks. Yes, he could see them crossing, mammoths moving forward with irrevocable decision, serious minded leviathans which knew their business and went about it in a deliberate manner. Bullets rattled on their hides, struck sparks out of their scaly armour, but had no effect on the air of detachment with which the great monsters in steel pursued their inexorable way. Nosing complacently forward, they crawled down into shell-craters, hiccoughed up again, straightened themselves out, and stealthily pursued their way towards the enemy trench.
"They're getting on," said Bowdy. "We'll soon be over, too." He detached the mirror from its rest and placed it in his pocket. "I never knew a better one for shaving; it's so handy."
Sergeant Snogger came into the bay again frantic with anger.
"I would like to know oo sent that bloody message up," he thundered. "Gawd, I'll find out, and then someone will be damned unlucky."
He stopped, then gave an inarticulate cry and collapsed in a heap. Bubb's jaw dropped and he stared at Snogger with dilated eyes. The sergeant lay silent and motionless, death was instantaneous for a shrapnel bullet had smashed his spine.
Bowdy and Flanagan lifted the dead man in their arms and placed him on the firestep.
"I never seed anybody knocked out so sudden," said Bubb in a nervous voice. "One minute speakin' and then...."
"Don't think of it," said Flanagan. "The tanks are well on now. What a funny thing—tanks. They are as old as the hills. Montaigne speaks about them. He calls them coaches. Listen."