The bright flames flashed out again in rapid succession.  The little speck moved on and on.  Grouped closely round it were compact little balls of cotton-wool, but trailing behind were thin wisps and semi-transparent whitish blurs.  Above a belt of trees in the distance we observed a series of rapid flashes followed by an equal number of detonations.  The upper air was filled with a blending of high notes—­a whizzing, droning, and sibilant buzzing, and pipings that died down in faint wails.  The little white speck moved on.  It entered a film of straggling cloud, but soon re-emerged.  It grew smaller and smaller.  Our eyes lost it for a moment and found it again.  Then they lost it altogether and nothing remained save the whitish blurs in the blue sky and a hardly audible booming in the far distance.

“I bet ’e’s took some photographs—­’e’ll be over to-night.  I reckon we’re bloody lucky to be at a C.C.S.”

“D’yer think ’e wouldn’t bomb a C.C.S.?”

“Course ’e wouldn’t—­’e knows as well as what we do that there’s some of ’is own wounded at C.C.S.’s.”

“Yer’ve got some bleed’n’ ’opes—­do anythink, ’e would.  Didn’t yer see it in the papers?  ‘E bombed a French C.C.S. at Verd’n an’ knocked out umpteen wounded.”

“I bet that’s all bloody lies—­yer can’t believe nothin’ what’s in the papers.”

“Can’t yer!  If yer don’t it’s because yer don’t want ter.  I believe yer a bleed’n’ Fritz yerself, always stickin’ up fer the bastard.  Everythink what’s in the papers is true—­the Government wouldn’t allow it if it wasn’t!  That’s got yer, ain’t it?”

“Yer want ter look at it a bit more broad-minded.  Course ’e makes mistakes sometimes like anybody else—­’ow do ’e know it’s a C.C.S.—­’e can’t see no Red Crorss at night?”

“Mistakes be blowed—­’e knows what’s what, you take my word for it ...”

We gathered idly round the disputants, glad of a distraction that would help to pass the time.  A third person joined in the argument: 

“If ’e bombs ‘orspitals an’ C.C.S.’s it’s our own bloody fault.  Look at our C.C.S. ’ere.  There’s a ordnance park and a R.E. dump up the road.  There’s a railway in front an’ a sidin’ where troops is always detrainin’.  Then there’s a gas dump over yonder.  An’ if we’re bloody fools an’ leave the lights on at night, ’ow can ’e tell what’s what when everything’s mixed up together?  Why the bloody ’ell don’t they put C.C.S.’s away from dumps an’ railways?  Why don’t they stick ’em right in the fields somewhere?  I bet we’ll cop it one o’ these nights, an’ serve us right too.”

German aeroplanes had passed overhead almost every clear windless night, but the buzz of propellers, that often went on for hours, and the dull boom of bombs exploding far away had never caused anything more than slight uneasiness and apprehension.