"I'll cut the bacon," I said, producing the meat which I had carried with me.
"Put the stuff down here," said Stoner, "and clear out of it."
Stoner, busy on a job, brooks no argument, he always wants to do the work himself. I stood aside and watched. Suddenly an object, about the size of a fat sausage, spun like a big, lazy bee through the air, and fifty paces to rear, behind a little knoll, it dropped quietly, as if selecting a spot to rest on.
"It's a bird," said Stoner, "one without wings."
It exploded with terrific force, and blew the top of the knoll into the air; a shower of dust swept over our heads, and part of it dropped into Stoner's fire.
"That's done it," he exclaimed, "what the devil was it?"
No explanation was forthcoming, but later we discovered that it was a bomb, one of the morning greetings that now and again come to us from the German trench mortars. This was the first we had seen; some of our fellows have since been killed by them; and the blue-eyed Jersey youth who was my friend at St. Albans, and who has been often spoken of in my little volume The Amateur Army, came face to face with one in the trenches one afternoon. It had just been flung in, and, accompanied by a mate, my friend rounded a traverse in a deserted trench and saw it lying peacefully on the floor.
"What is it?" he asked, coming to a halt.
"I don't know, it looks like a bomb!" was the sudden answering yell. "Run."
A dug-out was near, and both shoved in, the Jersey boy last. But the bomb was too quick for him. Half an hour later the stretcher-bearers carried him out, wounded in seventeen places.