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It's chiefly a matter of filling sandbags and placing them on the parapet." He pointed to a blurred heap in a corner of the wood. "There are fifty thousand there. Leave what you don't want!" "Where do we get the earth to fill the sandbags?" asked Blaikie. "The trenches, or the middle of the redoubt?" "Oh, pretty well anywhere," replied the Engineer.
But the explanation thereof, as proffered by Private Mucklewame, was quite simple and eminently sound. "All the decent lads," he observed briefly, "are oot here." "Good work!" said Wagstaffe, when Blaikie's tale was told. "What is the new trench for, exactly?" Blaikie told him. "Tell me more!" urged Wagstaffe, deeply interested.
"Plenty of time yet," explains Captain Blaikie to his subalterns, in reply to Bobby Little's expressions of impatience. "It's this way. We start by 'isolating' a section of the enemy's line, and pound it with artillery for about forty-eight hours. Then the guns knock off, and the people in front rush the German first-line trenches.
"So I should imagine," said Blaikie, with feeling. "The crosses aren't much guide, either," continued the Engineer. "The deceased are simply all over the place. The best plan is to dig until you come to a blanket. It is a rotten job, though, however you look at it." "Have you been here long?" inquired Bobby Little, who had come across the road for a change of air. "Long enough!
All around the British guns were thundering forth their hymns of hate full-throated now, for the hour for the next great assault was approaching. Wagstaffe's thoughts went back to a certain soft September night last year, when he and Blaikie had stood on the eastern outskirts of Béthune listening to a similar overture the prelude to the Battle of Loos.
"Just before the submarine was struck by the steamer's bows it succeeded in firing a torpedo, which hit and sank the Caledonia. The submarine was only slightly damaged. "The captain of the steamer, James Blaikie, was taken prisoner by the submarine." In January, 1917, the toll exacted by mines and submarines was especially large.
We have dodged the missiles of the Boche to an extent which justifies us in claiming that we have followed the progress of their war with a rather more than average degree of continuity. We were the last of the old crowd, too. Kemp has got his Brigade, young Cockerell has gone to be a Staff Captain, and you and I are here. Some of the others dropped out far too soon. Young Lochgair, old Blaikie "
Blaikie, biographer of Dr. Livingstone. The Venerable Mr. Cullen, the first missionary traveller in Bechuanaland, who had often entertained Dr. Moffat and Dr. Livingstone in his house, was present to express his interest in that country.
He turned to where Captain Blaikie's detachment were drawn up on the platform, "Take the first seventy men of that lot, and tell them to stand over there, under an officer." Captain Blaikie gave the necessary order. "Now," continued Colonel Hyde, "tell them to get the horses out and on board that steamer at once. The rest of your party are to go by another steamer. See?" "Yes, sir, perfectly.
"Why can't they let well alone?" he complains. "What's the trouble now?" "I expect it's our Divisional Artillery having a little target practice," says Captain Blaikie. He peers into a neighbouring trench-periscope. "Yes, they are shelling that farm behind the German second-line trench. Making good shooting too, for beginners," as a column of dust and smoke rises from behind the enemy's lines.
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