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Her husband and Sebright, with a grave mien, stamped busily around the binnacle aft, changing places, making way for each other, stooping in turns to glance carefully along the compass card at the low bluff, like two gunners laying a piece of heavy ordnance for an important shot.
From far-away Hong Kong and Singapore came mountain gunners equal to any in the world, Kroomen sent from their homes in West Africa surf boatmen to land stores, Raratongas from the Southern Pacific vied with them in boat craft and beat them in physique, while Egypt contributed a labour corps and transport corps running a long way into six figures.
Ferdinand, strong only as one to two, cannot hinder Broglio, though he tries variously; and is much at a loss, seeing Broglio irrepressibly busy this way, all through August and on into September; has heard, however, from Wesel, through secret partisans there, that Wesel, considered altogether out of risk, is left in a very weak condition; weak in garrison, weak even in gunners.
Furthermore, the market gunners of Currituck are robbing the people of 16 states of tens of thousands of wild-fowl that legitimately belong to them, during the annual autumn flight. The accompanying map shows how it is done. To-day, the cash rewards of the market-hunter who can reach a large city with his product are dangerously great.
They fell asleep, knowing that kind comrades would awaken them when the train drew up at their various garrisons. At Reims, the compartments disgorged the dragoons pell-mell; at Châlons, so many gunners and infantry had got out that the train was half emptied. At Sainte-Menehould, a large contingent of cuirassiers and infantry had cleared out.
Flash flash they went, and then came the whirr, the crash, and the screaming fragments. Suddenly our guns opened in answer from our right centre, and we could watch the shrapnel bursting right over their gunners' heads. They say the gunners were German. At all events, they were brave fellows, and worked the guns with extraordinary skill and courage.
Of ammunition for small arms and his ordinary brass rifled guns we were told he had no lack. For the three or four excellent batteries of Krupps he possessed he had but sixty rounds per cannon enough, with good common and shrapnel shell, had he made right use of his means, to have made matters unpleasant for us until our gunners and Maxims found the range.
If the newcomers put their shells into the target on their first trial they had qualified; and sometimes newcomers shoot quite as well as veterans, which is a surprise to both and the best kind of news for the general who is in charge of an expanding plant. The war will be decided by gunners and infantry that knew nothing of guns or drill when the war began.
They had thrust out into a salient, which presently the enemy saw. The German gunners, with deadly skill, boxed it round with shell-fire, so that the Londoners were inclosed by explosive walls, and then very slowly and carefully drew a line of bursting shells up and down, up and down that captured ground, ravaging its earth anew and smashing the life that crouched there London life.
We were sitting on the forward deck, looking out at the beautiful scenes through which we were passing, and occasionally turning back to see that none of the gunners posted themselves where they might make our positions uncomfortable, when Corny came back to us. "Can either of you speak French?" she asked.
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