United States or Albania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
All during the autumn and winter they had lain softly in hospital, enjoying their first rest for two years. Wagstaffe had lost his left arm and gained a decoration. Bobby, in addition to his Cross, had incurred a cracked crown and a permanently shortened leg. But both were well content.
It is not easy, and never comfortable, to dig lying down; but we must all learn to do it; so we proceed painfully to construct a shallow trough for our bodies and an annexe for our boots. Gradually we sink out of sight, and Captain Wagstaffe, standing fifty yards to our front, is able to assure us that he can now see nothing except Private Mucklewame's lower dorsal curve.
"Heigho! I suppose it's about time we detailed patrols and working parties for to-night. What a lovely sky! A truly peaceful atmosphere what? It gives one a sort of Sunday-evening feeling, somehow." "May I suggest an explanation?" said Wagstaffe. "By all means." "It is Sunday evening!" Captain Blaikie whistled gently, and said "By Jove, so it is." Then, after a pause: "This time last Sunday "
Of the targets themselves nothing as yet is to be seen. "Now then, let's get a move on!" suggests the Senior Captain briskly. "Cockerell, ring up the butts, and ask Captain Wagstaffe to put up the targets." The alert Mr. Cockerell hurries to the telephone, which lives in a small white-painted structure like a gramophone-stand. There is no need to describe the performance which ensues.
Captain Wagstaffe offers no opinion, but darkly recommends us to order pith helmets. However, we are rather suspicious of Captain Wagstaffe these days. He suffers from an over-developed sense of humour. The rank and file keep closer to earth in their prognostications. In fact, some of them cleave to the dust. With them it is a case of hope deferred.
I must get the next a little more to the left. That last one was a bit too near to three o'clock to be a certainty." He fired again with precisely the same result. Every one was quite apologetic to the sergeant-major this time. "This must be stopped," announced the Captain. "Mr. Simson, ring up Captain Wagstaffe on the telephone." But the sergeant-major would not hear of this.
"Some forty or fifty years ago," explained Wagstaffe, "when I was in the habit of frequenting places of amusement, Arthur Roberts was leading man at the establishment to which I have referred. He usually came on about half-past eight, just as the show was beginning to lose its first wind. His entrance was a most tremendous affair.
The door closed, and the Mess, grinding the ends of their cigars into their coffee-cups, heaved themselves resignedly to their aching feet. "There ain't," quoted Major Wagstaffe, "no word in the blooming language for it!" The Kidney Bean Redoubt is the key to a very considerable sector of trenches. It lies just behind a low ridge.
Here they lit their cigars in reminiscent silence, while neighbouring search-lights raked the horizon for Zeppelins which no longer came. It was a moment for confidences. "Old Mucklewame is like the rest of us," said Wagstaffe at last. "How?" "Wanting to go back, and all that. I do too just because I'm here, I suppose.
The brook is at once identified. "Private M'Leary, shut your eyes and tell me what there is just to the right of the windmill." "A wee knowe, sirr," replies M'Leary at once. Bobby recognises his "low knoll" also the fact that it is no use endeavouring to instruct the unlettered until you have learned their language. "Very good!" says Captain Wagstaffe.
Word Of The Day