Up there, on the Pimple, I had seen Normabell, the eyes of the battery.  Here I was watching its ears.  And, to finish the metaphor, to work it out, I was listening to its voice.  Its brazen tongues were giving voice continually.  The guns—­after all, everything else led up to them.  They were the reason for all the rest of the machinery of the battery, and it was they who said the last short word.

There was a good deal of rough joking and laughter in the battery.  The Canadian gunners took their task lightly enough, though their work was of the hardest—­and of the most dangerous, too.  But jokes ran from group to group, from gun to gun.  They were constantly kidding one another, as an American would say, I think.  If a correction came for one gun that showed there had been a mistake in sighting after the last orders—­if, that is, the gunners, and not the distant observers, were plainly at fault—­there would be a good-natured outburst of chaffing from all the others.

But, though such a spirit of lightness prevailed, there was not a moment of loafing.  These men were engaged in a grim, deadly task, and every once in a while I would catch a black, purposeful look in a man’s eyes that made me realize that, under all the light talk and laughter there was a perfect realization of the truth.  They might not show, on the surface, that they took life and their work seriously.  Ah, no!  They preferred, after the custom of their race, to joke with death.

And so they were doing quite literally.  The Germans knew perfectly well that there was a battery somewhere near the spot where I had found my gunners.  Only the exact location was hidden from them, and they never ceased their efforts to determine that.  Fritz’s airplanes were always trying to sneak over to get a look.  An airplane was the only means of detection the Canadians feared.  No—­I will not say they feared it!  The word fear did not exist for that battery!  But it was the only way in which there was a tolerable chance, even, for Fritz to locate them, and, for the sake of the whole operation at that point, as well as for their own interest, they were eager to avoid that.

German airplanes were always trying to sneak over, I say, but nearly always our men of the Royal Flying Corps drove them back.  We came as close, just then, to having command of the air in that sector as any army does these days.  You cannot quite command or control the air.  A few hostile flyers can get through the heaviest barrage and the staunchest air patrol.  And so, every once in a while, an alarm would sound, and all hands would crane their necks upward to watch an airplane flying above with an iron cross painted upon its wings.

Then, and, as a rule, then only, fire would cease for a few minutes.  There was far less chance of detection when the guns were still.  At the height at which our archies—­so the anti-aircraft guns are called by Tommy Atkins—­forced the Boche to fly there was little chance of his observers picking out this battery, at least, against the ground.  If the guns were giving voice that chance was tripled—­and so they stopped, at such times, until a British flyer had had time to engage the Hun and either bring him down or send him scurrying for the safe shelter behind his own lines.