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Others he employed, in a more special nature and trust, to be his pioneers in the main counter-mine.
About 1 A.M. an elderly R.E. officer came into our shelter, and told us in a voice shaking with joyful emotion that he had just blown up a German counter-mine which had been threatening our mine galleries at Hill 60. On February 8 we marched back to Canada Huts, and had another four days' rest.
In some cases, we seized and held the craters; in others the craters were untenable by either side. Under one of those held by us it was found that the enemy had sunk a big counter-mine, which was excavated and ready for charging at the time of the beginning of the battle, when Fricourt fell. This part of the line is more thickly coated with earth than most of the chalk hills of the battlefield.
Noon passed, and mid-afternoon, before the padre came out from the courtyard, covering his white head with his ungainly helmet. "We may go now," he said gravely, "in a few minutes." No more were needed, for the loose clods in the old shaft of their counter-mine were quickly handled, and the necessary words soon uttered.
To defend a position against this method of attack one commences a counter-mine at a depth sufficient to take the gallery or tunnel underneath the enemy's one, which, once it is located, is blown in before they manage to get under the defenders' trench.
She's evidently a very good memory she narrated that conversation clearly and fully. Pratt must be very sure of his hand if he showed her his cards in that way his very confidence in himself shows what a subtle network he's either made or is making. I question if he'd very much care if he knew that we know. But he mustn't know that yet. We must reply to his mine with a counter-mine!"
To be on duty in a listening-post thirty feet underground in a narrow tunnel, scarcely daring to breathe, listening to German miners making a counter-mine, and gradually picking their way nearer and nearer, until at last you can hear their conversation would try the nerves of the strongest of men. I went out, and made my way towards the well-known Quarries.
"But I have read of such things being done ere now," answered Cuthbert eagerly. "I have spent many an hour at Master Cole's shop upon the bridge reading of such matters how men mine and counter-mine, and dig and delve, and sink wells and drain them, and do many strange things of which we never dreamed in past days.
These curious anecdotes of Bow-street dexterity and Bagshot dodges thrust and parry mine and counter-mine ending, for the most part, in the triumph of Bow-street, Justice crowned, and a Tyburn speech tickled Lowe mightily, who quite enjoyed himself, and laughed more than his friend Colonel Stafford ever remembered to have heard him before, over some of the ingenious stratagems described so neatly by Dangerfield, and the gay irony with which he pointed his catastrophes.
The enemy, discovering our counter-mine, by the clay we threw out of the fort, desisted from that stratagem: and experience now fully convincing them that neither their power nor policy could effect their purpose, on the 20th day of August they raised the siege and departed.
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