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In actual battle they were hardly strong enough and could not carry all that burden of fighting-kit steel helmet, rifle, hand-grenades, shovels, empty sand-bags with which other troops went into action.
It is on record that in one short period of fourteen days, 150,000,000 sand-bags were collected, packed and despatched from Dundee to be used as protective elements in various ways and seats of conflict. A glance into the records of the textile industries will reveal the fact that the jute fibre was practically unknown in these islands a hundred years ago.
Faye says that I missed part of the scene; that, backed up against sand-bags and clinging to them on either side for support, stood a slender young woman with pigtail hanging down one shoulder, so terrified that her face, although brown from exposure to sun and wind, had become white and chalky.
A sudden tumult, shouts, trampling, laughter, and the door burst open and they streamed in: Norwegians, French, half-breeds dark-skinned fellows, all of them, save the Norwegians. They came like a flood, but they fell silent at sight of a woman, so beautiful and strange to them. All words ceased. They sank into place beside the table with the thump of falling sand-bags.
By this I obtained so much additional room as to proceed half way with my mine. Linen again was brought me, sand-bags made, and thus I successfully proceeded to all but the last operation. Everything was so well concealed that I had nothing to fear from inspection, especially as the new come garrison could not know what was the original length of the planks.
They were in their places, while he was alone and out of his place. He had bolted, while they held their ground; now he would be revealed in his true light. The bronze cross would be lost before it was pinned to his breast. From where he lay, however, he could see the other face of the redoubt and a wedge of men about to mount the sand-bags.
With wool-sacks, sand-bags, hurdles, planks, and other materials brought with them, the patriots now rapidly entrenched themselves in the position so brilliantly gained; while, without deferring for an instant the great purpose which they had come to effect, the sappers and miners fastened upon the ironbound soil of the dyke, tearing it with pick, mattock, and shovel, digging, delving, and throwing up the earth around them, busy as human beavers, instinctively engaged in a most congenial task.
I've kept the guns oiled, and will warrant the lot sound. Now, who'll lend me spare coolies, and stuff for sand-bags?" "Over where?" puffed Sturgeon. "Where's he taking your Mausers?" "Nunnery, of course." "Oh, I say!" Mr. Forrester looked up, with an injured air. "As the senior here, except Dr. Earle, I naturally thought the choice would be my house."
It was so bad in parts of the line during November storms that whole sections of trench collapsed into a chaos of slime and ooze. It was the frost as well as the rain which caused this ruin, making the earthworks sink under their weight of sand-bags. German and English soldiers were exposed to one another like ants upturned from their nests by a minor landslide. They ignored one another.
They have been thundering for a month, and no one so much as hears them now. Servien and Garneret, wearing the red-piped képi and the tunic with brass buttons, are seated side by side on sand-bags, bending over the same book. It was a Virgil, and Jean was reading out loud the delicious episode of Silenus.
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