"They've sent you two here, have they? Good egg! Well, you'll have lots to do, and a lot of shell-dodging. They've got a better brand in stock now—burst every time. Hello! There goes one!" he said, as the roaring thud of a bursting shell came from somewhere up the ridge, and some bits of dried clay broke away from the walls and rattled down on the wooden floor. "That fell in the Ordnance Stores. They've had a lot there lately."
"Where's it from? Achi Baba?" asked the Orphan.
"Old 'Asiatic Annie'—a 6-inch. She's a confounded nuisance. What d'you think of my 'dug-out'? Come and see where I 'pig' it;" and the Sub took them past the fire-place into a little room beyond, and, flashing his electric torch, showed them two beds, a small table, cupboard places in the mud walls, a stove, and two little wash-stands—evidently taken out of a ship. "We've got lots of stuff from these sunken hulks. Snug little place, isn't it?—especially when we light the stove in the corner."
"Are we going to live here?" the midshipmen asked.
"Good heavens, no, my wriggling worms! You won't live with the aristocracy. Come along, and I'll show you your 'pigsty'—another 'dug-out', which we call the dormitory."
A fine-looking old Leading Seaman, an old Naval Reserve man named Richards—he may have been fifty, he may have been sixty—came in with the three glasses of beer, just as another tremendous roar shook the wooden beams overhead and made the tin lamp-shade rattle—it sounded not twenty yards away.
"In the Sappers' place, that one, sir; they're starting early to-night," the old chap said, putting the tray on the table.
"Send these officers' gear round to the dormitory; you'll find it outside," the Sub told him.
"They've gone already, sir," Richards said.
"What's on top of those beams?" the Orphan asked, a little anxiously, as another roaring explosion thudded the air, not quite so near as the last.