“I’ve lived and learned!”
“Both, I am sure.”
“You needn’t be so superior. No one knew what any of this would be like until it was tried. We’ve something to go by, now! This War depends on turning a crank. The side that goes on turning it efficiently the longer will win. Our chaps look like lasting!”
“So do the Bosche. No, Dormer, you’re all wrong——”
At that moment a fresh burst of song came from the stables. A Cockney voice to a waltz tune:
“Orl that I wawnt is larve,
Orl that I need is yew——”
“There,” cried Kavanagh, his voice rising into his excited croak. “That’s what we want!”
Dormer did not reply. With dusk came a few long-range shots, gradually broadening and deepening into a bombardment towards dawn. Both of them had to be out and about all night. They had several casualties, and the whole place reeked with gas. As the grey light of another day began to change the texture of the shadows, movement was discernible about the road. It was their chance and with a higher heart and the feeling of relief, they were able to let loose the Lewis guns, which they had managed to save intact. For more than an hour, Dormer crawled from one to the other, seeing that they did not overheat or jam, for the fact that they were killing Germans pleased him. Then there was a slackening of fire on both sides.
They waited and the suspense from being irksome, became tolerable. There was a good deal of noise each side of them, and Dormer began to wonder if his detachment were surrounded, especially as the servants whom he had sent back to get into touch with Brigade, had not returned. It was a dull rainy afternoon prematurely dark, and the rain as it increased, seemed to beat down the gunning, as water quenches a fire. He must have been in that half-waking state that often superimposed on sleeplessness and the awful din, when he was thoroughly roused by trampling in the trees round the Château. He called to Kavanagh but got no reply. Then there was a pushing and scrambling at the wall behind the stable, and English cavalrymen came swinging over it. Dormer and Kavanagh were relieved, and were shortly able to hand over and prepare to march their command back to rejoin their Division, which, depleted by four weeks of continual mauling, was being taken out of the line.