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In one building there are alone four hundred native schoolgirls, rows upon rows of them that never seem to come to an end, sitting on the ground in their sober blue coats and trousers, peacefully combing each other's hair, or working on sandbags with the imperturbability of the Easterner who is placid under death.
As the front of the attack passed on over the wrecked trench and pressed the Germans back across the open, the sandbags were flung down and heaped scientifically in the criss-cross of a fresh breastwork. Other men, laden with coils of wire and stakes and hammers, ran out in front and fell to work erecting a fresh entanglement.
"How does it go?" asked the captain. "Very well, sir; though what we need is sandbags." "We'll have some up to-morrow." At the moment there was no firing in the vicinity. Faintly I heard the Germans pounding stakes, at work improving their own breastworks. A British soldier appeared out of the darkness in front. "We've found two of our men out there with their heads blown off by shells," he said.
On one occasion a man was known to have scraped the hoar frost off the sandbags to assuage his thirst, and some drank the dirty water that was to be found in shell craters.
Thinking they are surrounded, they obey like lambs, come out unarmed, with their hands up, officers and all, and are comfortably marched off in the dark, as prisoners into our trenches. They say that when the German officers discovered how they had been done, they foamed so hard that we had to use empty sandbags as strait waistcoats.
Several of the children were ill; and when not employed in other things, there were fresh sandbags to be made by the women, to take the place of those damaged by the enemy's shot. When, of an evening, a portion of the defenders came off duty, there was more talk and conversation, as all endeavored to keep up a good face and assume a confidence they were far from feeling.
A scattered fire was opened at the house soon after daybreak, and was kept up without intermission from bushes and other cover; but the watchers on the roof, seated behind the sandbags at opposite angles, were well under shelter, peering out occasionally through the crevices between the bags to see that no general movement was taking place among the enemy.
A short distance down the street a chain was stretched across it, and here a musketeer was pacing up and down on guard. Two others could be seen at the farther end of the street, where there was a gateway in the wall, now closed up with sandbags piled thickly against it. "We will see if the other streets are similarly guarded."
No longer did the canals echo the laughter of gay tourists, and desolately the pigeons flew about St. Mark's Square, which was almost a deserted place save for the workmen to whom had been assigned the task of protecting the church by placing sandbags on the roofs and iron girders at the windows: mournfully lapped the waters of the Adriatic.
Above his head long rounded timbers, side by side and touching one another, formed the roof, which was in good condition, save in the centre, where the blue sky shone through the hole he had entered by. In one corner stood a bedstead covered by a moth-eaten blanket, while all over the floor crumbling sandbags and old clothes and equipment gave it the appearance of a rag-and-bone shop.
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