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They come to the stable in big tourin' cars an' drove out the wagons with half the police of Oakland to help them. Say, it was sure some day. The sky rained cobblestones. An' you oughta heard the clubs on our heads rat-tat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat-tat!
At last one day comes daylight, where the snow has melted from the opening in front of you, and with the daylight comes the notes of birds and the ringing of the woodpecker rat-tat-tat-tat! rat-tat-tat-tat! from a tree near by. But even these signs that the spring is at hand again would not tempt you out if it were not for another feeling that begins to assert itself, and will not let you rest.
Rat-tat-tat-tat in quick succession, then a pause before another series instead of continuous and slower cracks, and you knew that it was not a German but a British machine gun farther away than you had thought.
A storm of shells was breaking round certain points in the road and particularly at the entrance to The Wood. I wondered what had become of the audience at the concert. Various sounds, transit of shells, bursting of shells, crashing of near-by cannon, and rat-tat-tat-tat! of mitrailleuses played the treble to a roar formed of echoes and cadences the roar of battle.
Occasionally, when the lights were out, some wag would begin an imitation of a machine gun, with its rat-tat-tat-tat, and another, catching the spirit of the mimic warfare, would make the whistling sound of a high angle shell.
He was just conscious of Courtenay shouting something about "Get back," of his being thrust violently back into the wide trench, of two or three figures crowding in after him, cursing and staggering and shooting back into the Frying Pan, of Courtenay's voice shouting again to "Stand clear," of a knot of men scrambling and heaving at something, and then of a deafening "Rat-tat-tat-tat," and the streaming flashes of a machine-gun.
"Hoist English colors, Captain," said the admiral, quietly; "and bend on our own, ready to go up." The red cross of St. George, the British man-of-war flag, rose slowly to the peak. The stranger was seen to alter her course, and head for the "Franklin." The admiral turned to Captain Greer and nodded. The latter gave an order to a midshipman standing near. Rat-tat rat-tat rat-tat-tat-tat!
In the evening, however, and in the night, after a terrific storm, a sharp, unexpected rat-tat-tat-tat, exactly like a machine-gun, would smash in on the silence, and two or three of the great grasses, which perhaps sheltered Dutchmen generations ago, would snap and fall.
'Listen! cried Dick. From somewhere on the banks of the river there was the sound of rifle-fire, and the rat-tat-tat-tat of machine-guns, like the rattle of riveters at work on a steel structure. Following a tow-path which ran by the river, they appeared to be entering a zone of comparative quiet.
Biggest battleship afloat two hundred feet longer than the rat-tat-tat launched her last rat-tat-tat gone to rat-tat-tat-tat for her guns." "What size guns?" I shouted above the hammers. "Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-inch!" he said, smiling grimly. "How much?" I yelled. "She has four rat-tat-tat-tat inch and twelve rattle-tattle inch besides rat-tat-tat-tat!" he answered, nodding. "Really!"
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