“Had you any excitement, Ayling?” asks Kemp.  “I hear rumours that you had two casualties.”

“Yes,” says Ayling.  “Four of us went out patrolling in front of the trench—­”

“Who?”

“Myself, two men, and old Sergeant Carfrae.”

“Carfrae?” Wagstaffe laughs.  “That old fire-eater?  I remember him at Paardeberg.  You were lucky to get back alive.  Proceed, my son!”

“We went out,” continues Ayling, “and patrolled.”

“How?”

“Well, there you rather have me.  I have always been a bit foggy as to what a patrol really does—­what risks it takes, and so on.  However, Carfrae had no doubts on the subject whatever.  His idea was to trot over to the German trenches and look inside.”

“Quite so!” agreed Wagstaffe, and Kemp chuckled.

“Well, we were standing by the barbed wire entanglement, arguing the point, when suddenly some infernal imbecile in our own trenches—­”

“Cockerell, for a dollar!” murmurs Wagstaffe.  “Don’t say he fired at you!”

“No, he did worse.  He let off a fireball.”

“Whew!  And there you stood in the limelight!”

“Exactly.”

“What did you do?”

“I had sufficient presence of mind to do what Carfrae did.  I threw myself on my face, and shouted to the two men to do the same.”

“Did they?”

“No.  They started to run back towards the trenches.  Half a dozen German rifles opened on them at once.”

“Were they badly hit?”

“Nothing to speak of, considering.  The shots mostly went high.  Preston got his elbow smashed, and Burke had a bullet through his cap and another in the region of the waistband.  Then they tumbled into the trench like rabbits.  Carfrae and I crawled after them.”

At this moment the doorway of the dugout is darkened by a massive figure, and Major Kemp’s colour-sergeant announces—­

“There’s a parrty of Gairmans gotten oot o’ their trenches, sirr.  Will we open fire?”

“Go and have a look at ’em, like a good chap, Wagger,” says the Major.  “I want to finish this letter.”

Wagstaffe and Bobby Little make their way along the trench until they come to a low opening marked MAXIM VILLA.  They crawl inside, and find themselves in a semicircular recess, chiefly occupied by an earthen platform, upon which a machine-gun is mounted.  The recess is roofed over, heavily protected with sandbags, and lined with iron plates; for a machine-gun emplacement is the object of frequent and pressing attention from high-explosive shells.  There are loopholes to right and left, but not in front.  These deadly weapons prefer diagonal or enfilade fire.  It is not worth while to fire them frontally.

Wagstaffe draws back a strip of sacking which covers one loophole, and peers out.  There, a hundred and fifty yards away, across a sunlit field, he beholds some twenty grey figures, engaged in the most pastoral of pursuits, in front of the German trenches.