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Updated: June 22, 2025
Well, if you get behind a partition, same as you did in the attic, don't you see that you can shove anything you please under the floor between the floor-boards and the lath and plaster of the ceiling below? Look here. I've drawn it." He produced a rude sketch, sufficient to enlighten the allies.
My oak chests, dresser and cupboard, constituted the furniture of the room. The library, curtained off with a plain curtain of crimson plush, adjoined; the kitchen door opened at the east corner of the room. The windows faced due south. The room therefore was always sunny. The floor-boards were stained, and covered by two or three cheap rugs.
"You will not be killing yourself, lass easy, easy, oh, but you are eager for the sea," and I knew that I was watching a master hand, a man cunning in the moods of the sea; but as I sat he bade me bale the water out of the boat, for it was slushing about high over the floor-boards, and these had come adrift, and were moving with every motion, so I baled with a will, glad for something mechanical to do, to keep my eyes off the menacing waves which seemed to rush up to devour us, and as if we were too poor a prey, spurned us away.
I have got used to it; for they were like that when they landed at Boulogne in August 1914; and they will be no different when they come back for good, to comfortable observers who prefer to be satisfied easily. There was a noise of musical instruments and untractable boots on the floor-boards.
The "false floors" to which we have alluded suggests a hiding-place that was put to very practical use by two old maiden ladies some years ago at an ancient building near Malvern, Pickersleigh Court. Each night before retiring to rest some floor-boards of a passage, originally the entrance to a "priest's hole," were removed.
Then we suddenly realized that the Germans had stripped the entire street of all woodwork of floor-boards, of beams and rafters, of doors and window-frames, leaving only the bare, empty shells of brick. We turned a corner and entered another street in which the houses had not been rifled. Several were occupied by civilians. Before us, in an open field, lay our camp.
These rooms led direct into one another, and, consisting of little more than timber and plaster, were in a woeful state of dilapidation. Everywhere the laths grinned through torn gaps in the ceilings and walls; everywhere the latter were blotched and mildewed with damp, and the floor-boards rotting in their tracks.
Dane, we examined the walls and floor-boards carefully, and Herbert, armed with a candle, went down to the cellar and investigated from below, returning to announce in a loud voice which made us all jump that it seemed all clear enough down there. After that we sat and waited, and I daresay the bareness and darkness of the room put us into excellent receptive condition.
Labyrinth had replaced order, nature had reaped her vengeance. At length, in the deepening shade, they came, at what had been the edge of the old terrace, to the daintiest of summer-houses, crumbling too, the shutters off their hinges, the floor-boards loose. Past and gone were the idyls of which it had been the stage.
They found a place away from door and window where some of the floor-boards still survived and sank down with their backs to the wall. Amy heaved a great sigh of relief. "Gee," he muttered, "this is fine!" "Pull the blanket up," murmured Clint with a pathetic effort at humour. Amy chuckled weakly. "I can't reach it," he said. "Guess it's on the floor. Anyway, the night air is very beneficial."
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