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He moved towards the new opening that had been made in the wall of the cellar, scrambled up it and disappeared. All the signalers lifted their attention from their instruments at the same moment and sat listening to the fresh note that ran through the renewed and louder clamor and racket. The signaler who was in touch with the rear station called them and began to tell them what was happening.
"When I went out for a look round that time, I found an artillery signaler laying out a new line, and I got him to let me tap in and send a message through his battery to headquarters." "You might have told me," said the aggrieved signaler. "It would have saved me a heap of sweat getting that message through."
The three received their instructions, drew their wet coats about their shivering shoulders, relieved their feelings in a few growled sentences about the dog's life a man led in that company, and departed into the wet night. The sergeant came back, re-read the message and discussed it with the signaler.
Of the last the signaler hardly required an account; the growling thumps of heavy shells exploding, kept sending little shivers down the cellar walls, the shiver being, oddly enough, more emphatic when the wail of the falling shell ended in a muffled thump that proclaimed the missile "blind" or "a dud."
Along with the new emotions that were choking him came an unaccustomed impulse of boastfulness. "I can read that," he said when she ignored his offer to save her. "Of course it's code, but I can spell it out." He made a move to step forward and watch the signaler, but she put her hand on his arm. "Don't go. I'm nervous, Cecil," she said. She had called him by his first name.
Is he arrived?" he shouted in the ear of the B Company captain who leaned anxiously over the parapet. The captain drew back and down. "He's in bless him I mean dash his impudent hide!" The Frenchman turned and called to his signaler, and the next moment the guns ceased. But the captain waited, watching with narrowed eyes the German parapet.
"It's bad enough," he said, "to get all these messages through by voice. I haven't a dog's chance of doing it if I have to buzz each one." The rear station spoke again and informed him that he had several urgent messages waiting. The forward signaler replied that he also had several messages, and one in particular was urgent above all others. "The blanky line is being pushed in," he said.
The stranger held what seemed to be a large white placard in either hand in place of a flag and his motions were not as clear-cut as they should have been, but to Roy, with whom, as he had often said, the semaphore code was like "pumpkin pie," the message was plain. As they ran alongside the wharf the khaki-clad signaler greeted them with the scout salute.
The signaler could hear the other end calling him and he promptly tapped off the answering signal and spoke into his instrument. He could hear the morse signals on the buzzer plain enough, but the voice was faint and indistinct. The signaler caught the corporal before he withdrew his tap-in and implored him to search along and find the leakage.
"Then," he said, "you can go ahead now and tell them the order to retire is cancelled, that the reënforcements have arrived, that they're up in our forward line, and we can hold it good oh!" He paused and wiped his wet forehead; "you," he said, turning to the other signaler, "tell them behind there the same thing." "How in thunder did they manage it, sergeant?" said the perplexed signaler.
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