When B Company moved into the Boar’s Head at one o’clock in the afternoon, they could truthfully say that the prevailing smell was now that of quick-lime.  The parapet was evenly built up, the firing step had been partly restored, and in the Snout there were good emplacements for the machine guns.  Certain unpleasant reminders were still to be found if one looked for them.  In the Snout a large fat boot stuck stiffly from the side of the trench.  Captain Ovens explained that the ground sounded hollow in there, and the boot probably led back into a dugout where a lot of Hun bodies were entombed together.  As he was pressed for time, he had thought best not to look for trouble.  In one of the curves of the loop, just at the top of the earth wall, under the sand bags, a dark hand reached out; the five fingers, well apart, looked like the swollen roots of some noxious weed.  Hicks declared that this object was disgusting, and during the afternoon he made Nifty Jones and Oscar scrape down some earth and make a hump over the paw.  But there was shelling in the night, and the earth fell away.

“Look,” said Jones when he wakened his Sergeant.  “The first thing I seen when daylight come was his old fingers, wigglin’ in the breeze.  He wants air, Heinie does; he won’t stay covered.”

Hicks got up and re-buried the hand himself, but when he came around with Claude on inspection, before breakfast, there were the same five fingers sticking out again.  The Sergeant’s forehead puffed up and got red, and he swore that if he found the man who played dirty jokes, he’d make him eat this one.

The Colonel sent for Claude and Gerhardt to come to breakfast with him.  He had been talking by telephone with the Missouri officers and had agreed that they should stay back in the bush for the present.  The continual circling of planes over the wood seemed to indicate that the enemy was concerned about the actual strength of Moltke trench.  It was possible their air scouts had seen the Texas men going back,—­otherwise, why were they holding off?

While the Colonel and the officers were at breakfast, a corporal brought in two pigeons he had shot at dawn.  One of them carried a message under its wing.  The Colonel unrolled a strip of paper and handed it to Gerhardt.

“Yes, sir, it’s in German, but it’s code stuff.  It’s a German nursery rhyme.  Those reconnoitering planes must have dropped scouts on our rear, and they are sending in reports.  Of course, they can get more on us than the air men can.  Here, do you want these birds, Dick?”

The boy grinned.  “You bet I do, sir!  I may get a chance to fry ’em, later on.”

After breakfast the Colonel went to inspect B Company in the Boar’s Head.  He was especially pleased with the advantageous placing of the machine guns in the Snout.  “I expect you’ll have a quiet day,” he said to the men, “but I wouldn’t like to promise you a quiet night.  You’ll have to be very steady in here; if Fritz takes this loop, he’s got us, you understand.”