“By Shorge,” said Peter Beaudett, “do they think we are feesh?”
“An’ sure,” said Pat Quinn in a hoarse whisper, “no dacent fish would live here—it’s mud turtles that we are!”
“Hush up,” commanded the top sergeant, in a hoarse whisper, “no noise; keep your ears and eyes open, but shut your mouths.”
Silence followed; but as we threw off our packs, and were told to make ourselves comfortable, it seemed a little sarcastic.
“If we mustn’t talk,” said Sam, in a low tone, “I suppose they can’t hinder us from keeping up a lot of thinking, can they?”
“An’ how can a man think,” muttered Pat, “with all this half-frozen mud on his fate and moind?”
We had settled down, in the mud, as one of the sergeants said to me with a wink, and with Yankee ingenuity were making ourselves as comfortable as we could. Private Shaw made a stove by punching holes in a metal bucket, and kindling a fire therein (which Corporal Sutherland said was “a kind of lightning bug heater”). He sat with it between his legs, trying to warm himself. Peter Beaudett, with his blanket wrapped around him, was saying all sorts of funny things in a low tone, about soldiering, and the irrepressible Quinn, with Irish combativeness, was making contrary replies.
“What made me get into this mud,” grumbled Peter, “when I had a good home and such beeg lot of comforts that I didn’t know that I had any?”
“An’ why,” said Quinn “didn’t ye’s stay tied to your mither’s apron string, so ye’s could crawl under the bed whin it thundered?”
In spite of all this by-play of growling and seeming grumpiness, the men were not dissatisfied at being face to face with their enemy, or at least in the trenches opposite them.