They saved me up for the last, and when Adam had finished speaking either he or Hogge would introduce me, and my singing would begin.  That was the programme we had arranged for the Hole-in-the-Ground Theater, as the Canadians called their amphitheater.  For this performance, of course, I had no piano.  Johnson and the wee instrument were back where we had left the motor cars, and so I just had to sing without an accompaniment—­except that which the great booming of the guns was to furnish me.

I was afraid at first that the guns would bother me.  But as I listened to Hogge and Adam I ceased, gradually, to notice them at all, and I soon felt that they would annoy me no more, when it was my turn to go on, than the chatter of a bunch of stage hands in the wings of a theater had so often done.

When it was my turn I began with “Roamin’ In the Gloamin’.”  The verse went well, and I swung into the chorus.  I had picked the song to open with because I knew the soldiers were pretty sure to know it, and so would join me in the chorus—­which is something I always want them to do.  And these were no exceptions to the general rule.  But, just as I got into the chorus, the tune of the guns changed.  They had been coughing and spitting intermittently, but now, suddenly, it seemed to me that it was as if someone had kicked the lid off the fireworks factory and dropped a lighted torch inside.

Every gun in the battery around the hole began whanging away at once.  I was jumpy and nervous, I’ll admit, and it was all I could do to hold to the pitch and not break the time.  I thought all of Von Hindenburg’s army must be attacking us, and, from the row and din, I judged he must have brought up some of the German navy to help, instead of letting it lie in the Kiel canal where the British fleet could not get at it.  I never heard such a terrific racket in all my days.

I took the opportunity to look around at my audience.  They didn’t seem to be a bit excited.  They all had their eyes fixed on me, and they weren’t listening to the guns—­only to me and my singing.  And so, as they probably knew what was afoot, and took it so quietly, I managed to keep on singing as if I, too, were used to such a row, and thought no more of it than of the ordinary traffic noise of a London or a Glasgow street.  But if I really managed to look that way my appearances were most deceptive, because I was nearer to being scared than I had been at any time yet!

But presently I began to get interested in the noise of the guns.  They developed a certain regular rhythm.  I had to allow for it, and make it fit the time of what I was singing.  And as I realized that probably this was just a part of the regular day’s work, a bit of ordinary strafing, and not a feature of a grand attack, I took note of the rhythm.  It went something like this, as near as I can gie it to you in print: 

“Roamin’ in the—­PUH—­LAH—­gloamin’—­BAM!