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Updated: June 9, 2025
There must be a sentry-group somewhere here, he calculated say midway between the roads. He must walk warily. Easier said than done. At this very moment a twig snapped beneath his foot with a noise like a pistol-shot, and a covey of partridges, lying out upon the stubble beside him, made an indignant evacuation of their bedroom. The mishap seemed fatal: M'Snape stood like a stone.
Captain Mackintosh surveyed the small wizened figure before him almost affectionately. "M'Snape," he said, "to-morrow I shall send in your name for lance-corporal!" The defenders were ready. The trenches were finished: "A" and "B" had adjusted their elbow-rests to their liking, and blank ammunition had been served out. Orders upon the subject of firing were strict.
Caesar, when he had concluded his summer campaign, went into winter quarters. Caesar, as Colonel Kemp once huskily remarked, knew something! Still, each man to his taste. Corporal Mucklewame, for one, greatly prefers winter to summer. "In the winter," he points out to Sergeant M'Snape, "a body can breathe withoot swallowing a wheen bluebottles and bum-bees.
Brother Boche was merely "loosing off a belt," as a precautionary measure, at commendably regular intervals. "I cannot locate that gun," said Angus impatiently. "Can you, Corporal M'Snape?" "It is not in the estamint itself, sirr," replied M'Snape. I doubt they cannot see us themselves only the ground in front of us."
The pair made their way to the hitherto blind side of the building, and cautiously peeped through a much-perforated shutter in the living-room. "Do you see it, sirr?" inquired M'Snape eagerly. Angus chuckled. "See it? Fine! It is right in the open, in the middle of the street. Look!" He relinquished his peep-hole.
Yes, he can distinctly hear guttural voices, and an occasional clink, clink. The saphead has been reached, and digging operations are in progress. A whispered order comes down the line that M'Snape is to "investigate." He wriggles forward until his progress is arrested by a stunted bush. Very stealthily he rises to his knees and peers over.
The admirable M'Snape produced from his pocket a Mills grenade, and handed it to his superior. "Just the one, sirr," he said.
Almost simultaneously there came a triumphant roar lower down the street, as Mucklewame and his followers dashed obliquely across into the estaminet. Mucklewame himself was carrying the derelict Lewis gun. In the doorway stood the watchful M'Snape. "This way, quick!" he shouted. "We have the Gairman gun spotted, and the officer is needing the Lewis!" But M'Snape was wrong.
They are half-way across now, and the moon is marking time behind a cloud. Suddenly there steals to the ears of M'Snape apparently from the recesses of the earth just in front of him a deep, hollow sound, the sound of men talking in some cavernous space. He stops dead, and signals to his companions to do likewise. Then he listens again.
Private Nimmo has a bullet-wound in the calf of his leg, and Sergeant Carfrae, whom Nature does not permit to lie as flat as the others, will require some repairs to the pleats of his kilt. "All present?" inquires Simson. It is discovered that M'Snape has not returned. Anxious eyes peer over the parapet.
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