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"You'd better fix bayonets," says the sergeant; "come, get 'em on." We stop while we adjust weapon to weapon and then run to overtake the rest. We go down; we go up; we mark time; we go forward like the others. We are no longer in the trench. "Get your heads down kneel!" We stop and go on our knees. A star-shell pierces us with its intolerable gaze.
As I stepped down from my somewhat exposed position a soldier standing a few feet farther along the line raised his head above the parapet, as though to relieve his cramped muscles. Just then a star-shell burst above us, turning the trench into day.
Exactly as she spoke, a brilliant light hung for a moment suspended in the dark arch of the sky, then shivered into a blaze of garish effulgence, girdling the countryside and illuminating every road and building, every field, and tree, and ditch, as brightly as though it were broad daylight. "A star-shell!" gasped Molly. "What a beastly thing!
But they haven't got me yet. Those laugh best who laugh last, and perhaps I've got a laugh coming to me." But just then the laugh seemed a good ways off. At any instant some one of the many passing to and fro might stumble into the hole and the game would be up. Or a flare from a star-shell might reveal him crouching beside his prisoner. His prisoner!
Lights flashed here and there, a mass of figures detached themselves from the gloom, and in the light of a star-shell Frank saw a detachment of American troops coming on the run! His pursuers saw them too and the chase slackened.
Then again, as they approached the firing-line, it would suddenly become intensely bright, when from the English lines, or from those of the Germans which lay not more than two hundred yards in front of them, a fireball or star-shell was sent up, that caused everything it shone upon to leap into vivid illumination.
"I see," said Ayling, surveying the position with real interest. He was beginning to enjoy selecting gun-emplacements which really mattered. It was a change from nine months of "eye-wash." When the German star-shell had spent itself they crossed the road, to the rear of the redoubt, and marked the other two emplacements in comparative safety now.
No. 2 Platoon had two casualties for the night a corporal who had paused too long in looking over the parapet while a star-shell flared, and 'caught it' neatly through the forehead, and a private who, in the act of firing through a loop-hole, had been hit by a bullet which glanced off his rifle barrel and completed its resulting ricochet in the private's eyes and head.
"Did they loose it off last night?" "No. To-night's the night. Have you finished here!" "Yes, thanks!" "Right-o! We'll go to the next corner. You'll get a first-class field of fire there, I should say." The second position was duly inspected, the only incident of interest being the bursting of a star-shell directly overhead. "Better lie down for a minute," suggested the Engineer.
Stretcher-bearers for the Turks, please." Or he would hurl the bomb high into the air, so that it burst above the enemy like a rocket or a star-shell. He would blow a long whistle, as it shot skyward, and say "PLONK!" as it exploded into a shower of splinters. For Doe was young and effervescing with life. He enjoyed himself, and his bombers enjoyed him as their officer.
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