"I see," said Earl simply.
As these eight soldiers sat in the pit and waited, their spirits began to rise and they seemed to forget the horrors they had been through and their present danger. They even began to make jokes and laugh over certain incidents of the fight. The thing that amused them most was the recollection of the German prisoners shuffling off with their hands in their pockets to keep up their trousers. One of the men had even had time to pick one German's pocket of a package of cigarettes.
He passed them around with great glee and soon every one was smoking except Earl, Leon and Jacques. They had never acquired the habit and knowing that they were better off without it had no desire to start. Their main desire was to keep themselves in perfect physical trim.
As they sat there talking the shells flew over their heads in a steady stream. In the great crater, however, they were comparatively safe unless some stray shell should chance to land directly in the hollow where they were seated.
"And if one ever does," exclaimed Jacques, "it's good-by to us."
"Why so?" demanded Earl. "In a hole as large as this we might get nothing worse than a spattering of dirt."
"Yes," said Jacques, "but don't you know that there are probably several thousand rounds of ammunition buried under here? If there should happen to be an explosion, what do you think would happen to us?"
"Well there wouldn't be enough to make much of a fuss over, I guess," remarked Leon with a grim smile.
A man suddenly appeared on the rim of the pit and slid over the edge.
"Ho, Coudert," one of the soldiers greeted him.