"So am I," declared Kenneth. "There's some water in the bucket. We needn't be too particular. I dipped my handkerchief in it, but it was fairly clean."
"I'm ready to mop water out of a ditch," said Rollo.
Kenneth groped for the bucket. It was within six inches of his foot and standing upright, but it was empty. A fragment of shell had torn a hole through it close to the bottom. Not a drop of liquid was left.
"We've had a jolly narrow squeak," said Kenneth. "After that it would be hard lines if we were knocked out in the last lap. I don't think we shall be. Suppose we start tunnelling."
"Steady on, old man! We ought to wait till it gets light. Then we will be able to see what we are doing," expostulated his companion.
"I can feel."
"Yes, perhaps; but by dislodging part of the rubble you may cause a sort of landslide and bury us completely. I vote we exercise just a little more patience."
They had been conversing in whispers, lest the sound of their voices might be heard by a sentry, for it was quite possible that the Germans might think they had not accounted for the whole garrison of the ruined farmhouse. They had good reason to believe that the British dispatch-rider had taken refuge there; the only chance was that they might have come to the conclusion that Rollo was one of the unrecognizable victims of the deadly shell.
Slowly the hours of darkness passed, the silence broken only at intervals by the dull grinding of the subsiding debris and by a desultory, whispered conversation between the lads. Then Kenneth became aware that he could indistinctly discern his companion's face The long-hoped-for dawn had come at last.
In another half-hour it was light enough to form a fairly accurate idea of the state of affairs. The prisoners were in a triangular-shaped space, two sides consisting of the adjoining walls of the cellar. The third was composed of a bank of broken bricks and stones, diminishing in thickness as it grew in height. Overhead a part of the vaulted roof had fallen, but the brickwork remained cemented together, forming a shield from the rubble above it. But for this mass of brickwork the lads would have been crushed to death by the immense weight of the ruined walls of the farm-house.