Sometimes, in the silence which followed, would be heard the melancholy call, "Stretcher! Stretcher!" but most frequently a hole in the ground, or a few scattered boxes of stores or bundles of fodder, alone marked where it had fallen and burst.
From Achi Baba came the little 4.1-inch shells at all hours of the day.
People told the Orphan that some ten days after the Belgrade-Nish-Constantinople railway had been reopened through conquered Serbia, it became evident that the Turks were much more lavish with their ammunition.
They must have received ample additional supplies, and, what was still more noticeable, the new shells nearly always burst.
The Orphan gradually grew accustomed to these shells, but he was always "mighty" glad when the two big "hates" of the day were finished.
Everyone had marvellous escapes; in fact, marvellous escapes were so common that the recounting of them soon failed to interest others.
One morning the Orphan was sleeping soundly in the dormitory, and at about ten o'clock Bubbles, who had somehow or other fallen overboard from his picket-boat, ran up to shift his wet clothes, and could not resist the temptation of waking up the Orphan. He had just commenced to get some sense into him and make him take an interest in his accident, when in through the roof smashed a shell, passed between the Orphan sitting on his bed and Bubbles standing over him, buried itself in the ground, and burst. Bubbles was thrown to the other side of the dormitory, the Orphan found himself on top of an awakened and angry R.N.R. Lieutenant, and all three, covered with dust, dashed through the smoke out into the open air.
"Kaiser Bill!" the Orphan cried, darted back again, and brought out the tortoise.
"He was under my bed, he wasn't quite buried; he doesn't seem to have been hit."
They tried anxiously to make him put out his head, but he wouldn't. Bubbles, seizing him, looked inside the shell. "He's all right," he said, much relieved; "I saw his mouth move."