“The 13th Division,” exclaimed Monty.  “Also from Suvla.”

“They’re reinforcements,” said I.  “It’s all in accordance with the Special Order of the Day that we are to ’hold Helles for the Empire.’”

Monty was just about to pulverise me with a particularly rude rejoinder, when a voice outside called “Hostile aircraft overhead,” and we were drawn at a run to the door by the unmistakable sound of anti-aircraft guns, followed by the bursting out of rifle and machine-gun fire, which grew and grew till it sounded like a mighty forest crackling and spluttering in flames.  We glanced into the sky at the shrapnel puffs, and immediately discovered two enemy aeroplanes flying lower than they had ever done before.  We could almost see the observers leaning over the fuselage to spy out if the British on Helles were up to the monkey tricks they had played at Suvla.  So low were they that all men with rifles—­the infantry in their trenches, the A.S.C. drivers from their dumps, the transport men from their horse-lines—­were firing a rapid-fire at the aeroplanes and waiting to see them fall.

“Cheeky brutes!” I shouted, and, observing that our batmen were hastily loading their rifles, ran for my revolver, determined to fire something into the air.

“It’s like us,” growled Monty, “to land reinforcements under the very eyes of the enemy aeroplanes—­” He paused, as though a new idea had struck him.  “Rupert, my boy, did you say that the Special Order about holding Helles was extensively published?”

“Yes, rather.  Hung in the very traverses of the trenches.”

“I thought so.”  He nodded with irritating mysteriousness.  “What fools you and I are!  Stop firing at those Taubes.  Or fire wide of them—­fire wide.”

“Why?”

“Because our Staff will want them to get home and report all that they’ve seen.  That’s why.”

Of a truth Monty was quite objectionable, if he was excited with some secret discovery, and thought it amusing not to disclose it.  And when, later that afternoon, a message came round saying that irresponsible units were not to fire at hostile aircraft, owing to the danger of spent bullets, he bragged like any pernicious schoolboy.

“I told you so.  O Rupert, my silly little juggins, you’re as dense as a vegetable marrow.  I mean, you’re a very low form of life.”

Sec.2

The weather broke.  Two days of merciless rain turned the trenches into lanes of red clayey mud, and the floor of the Gully Ravine into a canal of stagnant brown water.  And one evening Monty returned from his visitations, limping badly.  He had slipped heavily, as he paddled through the ankle-deep mud, and had hurt his back.  I sent him at once to bed, and on the following morning announced that I was going to no less terrifying a place than Brigade Headquarters to insist on his being given a pair of trench-waders.  He enjoined me not to be an ass, and I rebuked him severely for speaking to his doctor like that, and, going out of the dug-out, broke off all communication with one so rude.