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"'Twill take some scheming," agreed another rifleman, "but maybe we can get round the officer that's in the listening-post to-night to let us drive a sap out." "It's not him ye'll be getting round," said McRory, "for it's the Little Lad himself that's in it.
He had been through it all himself. Every man has it the first time that he goes on any of these dangerous duties. I can frankly say I disliked the listening-post duty that first time. Nothing happened of course. There was no killing, but it was nervy work. Later, in common with other fellows, I was able to go on listening-post with the same nonchalance as my first coster friend.
To be on duty in a listening-post thirty feet underground in a narrow tunnel, scarcely daring to breathe, listening to German miners making a counter-mine, and gradually picking their way nearer and nearer, until at last you can hear their conversation would try the nerves of the strongest of men. I went out, and made my way towards the well-known Quarries.
There used to be an employee of the State committee named Lawrence. He was a man of a good deal of receptive intelligence and worshipped the senator. Mr. Conkling discovered this quality and used Lawrence as a target or listening-post. I have often had Lawrence come to my office and say: "I had a great night. The senator talked to me or made speeches to me until nearly morning."
That night the Sergeant came along and said, "Goddard and Wilson, go out on listening-post." We looked at the spot where he wanted us to go. Fritzie was landing shells there about one a minute, and there was absolutely no protection. I said "Say, Sergeant, that's suicide!" "I know," said he, "but I have orders to put a post there."
"We have driven a sap to within thirty metres of the enemy," he said, "and have established a listening-post out there. Would you care to go out to it?" I would, and said so. "No talking, then, if you please," he warned me, "and as little noise as possible." This time the boyau was very narrow, and writhed between its earthen walls like a dying snake.
Then he went into the tiny dugout where the telephone was, and rang up the trench commander, and asked him to send out a bearer, for the boyau communicating with the listening-post was too narrow to admit the passage of a stretcher. The bearer arrived just as we started to return. He was a regular dray-horse of a man, with shoulders as massive and competent as those of a Constantinople hamel.
On the left front the muffled clinking of picks and shovels announces that a "sap" is in course of construction: those incorrigible night-birds, the Royal Engineers, are making it for the machine-gunners, who in the fulness of time will convey their voluble weapon to its forward extremity, and "loose off a belt or two" in the direction of a rather dangerous hollow midway between the trenches, from which of late mysterious sounds of digging and guttural talking have been detected by the officer who lies in the listening-post, in front of our barbed-wire entanglement, drawing secrets from the bowels of the earth by means of a microphone.
Now and then there was a nod to a nurse, who seemed to understand without words, and a motion of a hand, but not three words were spoken. It made a Silhouette of Silence that saved a boy's life. The next scene is a listening-post. Two men are stretched on their stomachs in the brown grass. A little hole, just enough to conceal their bodies, has been dug there.
On the latter a tendency was quickly displayed to slacken work and to treat the job as being sufficiently complete, but when it came to Lieutenant Riley's turn to take charge of a fresh relief of workers on the new trench, he very quickly succeeded in brisking up operations. Arrived at the listening-post, he found Sergeant Clancy and spoke a few words to him.
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