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We could not enter their trench by surprise without first removing it, and the job fell on me. I prepared a mine of my own. I took two Stokes shells, changed the time-fuse for instantaneous, took out the safety-pins holding the lever down by means of an iron ring. I crept out with these shells just a little before dark so as to arrive at the position before the Germans.
Course, we hadn't really seen any bomb; but, what with the odd notions of them two females and the Lieutenant's panicky talk, I was feelin' almost jumpy myself. "A time-fuse, most likely," says he, "set for midnight. That should give us several hours. We must find out who lives in that house." "Ought to be simple," says I. "Come on."
"Well, sir," observed Guy at last, when the secretary had withdrawn, "one by one they're getting away from us and by the same route. First Rockamore, now Paddington!" Blaine looked up with a grim smile. "Putting a woman wise to anything is like lighting a faulty time-fuse: you never can tell when you're going to get your own fingers blown off! But tell me something, Guy.
It was burnt to charcoal, but we could still make out the holes bored in its side at intervals to convert it into a time-fuse. This is the "one mortar" catalogued in our Intelligence book. It was satisfactory to have located it. Two guns of the 69th Battery threw shrapnel over its head all morning; then the Naval guns had a turn and seem to have reduced it to silence.
He'd generally begin quietly, when we were comfortable with our pipes in camp after tea, with "I once knew a young man " or "That reminds me of a young fellow I knew " and so on. You never knew when he was going to begin; or when he was going to hit you. In our last camp, before we reached Solong, he told two of his time-fuse yarns.
The "hairbrush," the "lemon bomb," the "cricket ball," and the "policeman's truncheon" were the most important of these, all of them so-called because of their resemblance to the articles for which they were named. The first three were exploded by a time-fuse set for from three to five seconds.
But even thus early in the day the Germans had demonstrated the superiority of their artillery; their percussion shells had an enormous range, and exploded, with hardly an exception, on reaching their destination, while the French time-fuse shells, with a much shorter range, burst for the most part in the air and were wasted.
Standing on the platform he removes his coat and trousers and reappears arrayed in the common suit of a train hand. A soft cap completes the disguise. A faint rumble reaches his ears. "The first Magnate has fallen" he whispers, as if confiding a secret. "Yes; I have carried out my plan. James Golding is buried at the bottom of the Channel. The time-fuse worked."
On the outside shell of the craft rested a magazine with a heavy charge of gunpowder which the submarine navigator intended to screw fast to the bottom of a fifty-gun British man-of-war, and which was to be exploded by a time-fuse after he had got well out of harm's way.
But he'll get up, and he might have accepted the seat and spared me my probation: he's not married, I am, I have a wife, and Master Philip divides me against my domestic self, he does. But let that be: I serve duty too. Not a word to our friend up yonder. It's a secret with a time-fuse warranted to explode safe enough when the minutes are up, and make a powerful row when it does.
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