Suddenly there came an answering salvo from Hunland, and a flock of shells whizzed over our heads.

“Tiens!” my Captain exclaimed.  “He has lost his little temper, has he?  Naughty, naughty!  I must give him a slap.  A hundred rounds!” he shouted into the ’phone, and the German lines spouted like a school of whales blowing.

Again the Bosch slammed across a heavy reply.  My Captain leapt to his ’phone.  “He would answer me back, would he?  The impudence!  Give him a thousand rounds, my children!”

Then for the next hour or so the sky was filled with a screaming tornado of shells, rushing, bumping, and bursting, and the Bosch lines sagged, bulged, quivered, slopped over, and were spattered against the blue in small smithereens.

“And now let us see what he says to that,” said my Captain pleasantly.  We waited, we watched, we listened; but there came no reply (possibly because there was no one left to make one), and my Captain turned to me, shoulders shrugged, palms outspread, a grimace of apologetic disgust on his mobile face—­like a circus-master explaining that his clown has got the measles:  “Nottin, see you? Pas d’esprit, l’animal!”

* * * * *

[Illustration:  The RUMOURISTS.

First ass.  “And I have it on the best authority.”

Second ass.  “Incredible!” [Goes off and repeats it.]]

* * * * *

Certainly Hans the Hun does not seem to be enjoying the same high spirits he did of yore.  Possibly he is beginning to regret the day he left the old beer garden, his ample Gretchen, and the fatty foods his figure demands.  The story of Patrick and Goldilocks would tend to prove as much.

The other day Patrick was engaged in one of those little “gains” which straighten out the unsightly kinks in the “line” and give the War-correspondents a chance to get their names in print.

Patrick and his friends attacked in a snowstorm, dropped into a German post, gave the occupants every assistance in evacuating, and prepared to make themselves at home.  While they were clearing up the mess, they found they had taken a prisoner, a blond Bavarian hero who had found it impossible to leave with his friends on account of half-a-ton of sandbags on his chest.  They excavated him, told him if he was a good boy they’d give him a ticket to Donington Hall at nightfall, christened him Goldilocks for the time being, and threw him some rations, among which was a tin of butter.

He listened to all they had to say in a dazed sulky fashion, but at the sight of the tin of butter he gurgled drunkenly and seemed to go light-headed.  He spent a perfect day revelling in the joys of anticipation, crooning over that butter, cuddling it, hiding it in one pocket after the other.  Towards dusk down came the snow again, and under cover thereof the Bosch counter-attacked.