“Oh, certainly!  We can make room for you in here, if you’re not too big.  Speak quietly, or you’ll waken the Major.”  Giggles and smothered laughter; a flashlight winked for a moment and showed a line of five trucks, the front and rear ones covered with tarpaulin tents.  The voices came from the shelter next the gun.  The men inside drew up their legs and made room for the strangers; said they were sorry they hadn’t anything dry to offer them except a little rum.  The intruders accepted this gratefully.

The Britishers were a giggly lot, and Claude thought, from their voices, they must all be very young.  They joked about their Major as if he were their schoolmaster.  There wasn’t room enough on the truck for anybody to lie down, so they sat with their knees under their chins and exchanged gossip.  The gun team belonged to an independent battery that was sent about over the country, “wherever needed.”  The rest of the battery had got through, gone on to the east, but this big gun was always getting into trouble; now something had gone wrong with her tractor and they couldn’t pull her out.  They called her “Jenny,” and said she was taken with fainting fits now and then, and had to be humoured.  It was like going about with your grandmother, one of the invisible Tommies said, “she is such a pompous old thing!” The Major was asleep on the rear truck; he was going to get the V.C. for sleeping.  More giggles.

No, they hadn’t any idea where they were going; of course, the officers knew, but artillery officers never told anything.  What was this country like, anyhow?  They were new to this part, had just come down from Verdure.

Claude said he had a friend in the air service up there; did they happen to know anything about Victor Morse?

Morse, the American ace?  Hadn’t he heard?  Why, that got into the London papers.  Morse was shot down inside the Hun line three weeks ago.  It was a brilliant affair.  He was chased by eight Boche planes, brought down three of them, put the rest to flight, and was making for base, when they turned and got him.  His machine came down in flames and he jumped, fell a thousand feet or more.

“Then I suppose he never got his leave?” Claude asked.

They didn’t know.  He got a fine citation.

The men settled down to wait for the weather to improve or the night to pass.  Some of them fell into a doze, but Claude felt wide awake.  He was wondering about the flat in Chelsea; whether the heavy-eyed beauty had been very sorry, or whether she was playing “Roses of Picardy” for other young officers.  He thought mournfully that he would never go to London now.  He had quite counted on meeting Victor there some day, after the Kaiser had been properly disposed of.  He had really liked Victor.  There was something about that fellow... a sort of debauched baby, he was, who went seeking his enemy in the clouds.  What other age could have produced such a figure?  That was one of the things about this war; it took a little fellow from a little town, gave him an air and a swagger, a life like a movie-film,—­and then a death like the rebel angels.