by W. F. Morris
“Never,” asserted Pagan emphatically. “A sheet of corrugated iron and a couple of sandbags was more like it.”
Clare looked round the cold bare walls. “You call this a good one?” she asked.
“Rather!” said Baron. “This would keep anything out—shells you know.”
“And those you had would not?”
“Well, not many of them would keep out a direct hit, would they, Charles? I will show you the kind of thing, if I can find it. There must be some non-concrete shelters here somewhere.”
“There are; I remember seeing them,” said Pagan. “But unlike ours they had four or five layers of tree-trunks on top.”
“Anyway, it will give Clare some idea of the kind of thing,” said Baron.
“Yes, but I would be a bit careful where you go,” warned Pagan. “Some of these props must be pretty rotten by now.”
They left the concrete shelter and trudged on up the narrow road through the gloom. Baron peered constantly at the steep, debris-littered slope to the left for a suitable dug-out to show Clare.
“Anyway we shall have had a nice walk,” he remarked, “even if the ghost doesn’t function.”
“We have,” agreed Clare. “And the night is yet young.”
“And for all we know,” remarked Pagan, “the ghost—especially if he’s human—may be in any one of these dug-outs.”
“Here, don’t you try to put the wind up me, Charles,” grinned Baron.
“I’m not,” retorted Pagan. “I’m merely trying to put some sense into that head of yours.”
Baron suddenly halted and switched on the torch. “This looks like the very thing,” he exclaimed.
The beam of light disclosed a narrow opening in the steep bank, half hidden by weeds and fallen earth, and framed by ancient sagging timbers.
“That’s the sort of thing, Clare, do you see,” exclaimed Baron. “No concrete or girders, but dug out with a spade and revetted with expanding metal or timber. Come along, we will have a look inside.”
He bent his head and entered the low narrow passage. Clare followed and Pagan brought up the rear. The side walls were of weed grown earth, revetted here and there with damp and rotten boards. The roof was revetted with sheets of galvanized iron, supported at intervals by sagging timbers and pit props against the side walls.
The passage was about eight feet long, and at the end of it, Baron, who was a few feet ahead of Clare, stepped under a low lintel into the dug-out. “It’s concrete,” he exclaimed disappointedly as he swung the torch round. “Didn’t Jerry ever take a chance!”
Clare stumbled over a mound of fallen earth in the passage and lurched against one of the pit props. Pagan heard the hollow sound of rotten wood cracking and felt a shower of loose earth upon his head and shoulders. He sprang forward, caught Clare beneath the arms, and swept her before him under the low lintel into the dug-out. Behind him a heavy timber cracked with a report like a gun, and the sound was followed immediately by a roar of falling earth, and then silence, absolute silence.
II
For a moment no one spoke. Then Pagan broke the tense stillness with a laugh. “Well, if Brother Bosche had only built the passage of concrete as well as the dug-out, that would not have happened,” he said cheerfully.
“That’s true,” agreed Baron in the same cheerful tones. “He might have finished the job when he was about it. As it is we shall have to do some grubbing with our hands.”
He threw the beam of the torch upon the doorway. The collapse of the passage roof had bent downwards one of the roof sheets of galvanized iron and wedged it tightly against the concrete jambs, leaving visible only an inch or two of earth at the bottom. In the dim halo of light above the clear cut beam his eyes met Pagan’s eloquently.
Pagan pulled a couple of candles from his pocket. “It is lucky I brought these,” he said cheerfully. “I think a light is indicated.” He dug the candles into some loose earth on the floor and lighted them.
Clare had not said a word since the catastrophe. She watched the two men in silence. The candlelight revealed the dug-out as rectangular in shape, some twenty feet long by fifteen wide and seven high. The floor was littered with rubbish, and there was a wire netting bunk in one corner covered with frowsy sacking. Half way across the concrete roof there was a crack some two or three inches wide, and from it a trickle of water made a long dark stain down the side wall, and then ran across the floor to a sump pit in one corner. Pagan carelessly raised a candle to the crack, and as the flame flickered in the draught his eyes met Baron’s in a meaning look. He put the candle back upon the floor.
“This is rather comic,” he remarked. “We come out to catch a ghost, and we have got caught ourselves.”
Clare spoke for the first time, and her voice was calm. “That sheet of corrugated iron across the door is rather unfortunate for your grubbing idea, isn’t it Dicky?”
Pagan glanced at her quickly. “Well, it won’t make it any easier,” he admitted.
Clare looked him straight in the eyes. “In fact it makes it impossible?” she suggested.
He did not answer that question. “I think the best idea would be to wait for somebody to dig us out,” he said. “We can shout through that crack in the roof.”
“And you think somebody would hear?” she asked calmly.
“I can assure you,” he laughed, “that when Baron and I lift our voices in song, somebody is bound to hear.”
“If anybody is there,” she added quietly.
“Well, not at night,” he admitted. “But in the morning old Baron and I will lift the roof off! There are any number of people up here in the daytime salving wood and stuff,” he fibbed cheerfully.
She did not press the question. She glanced at Baron and then said lightly, “Well, what do we do now?”
“If we had only brought a pack of cards we might have played dummy bridge,” suggested Pagan cheerfully.
“Anyway we might sit down,” said Baron.
They removed the frowsy sacking from the wire netting bunk and tested it. It seemed sound, and they sat down.
“Reminds one of old days, Charles, somewhere in France,” said Baron.
Pagan nodded. “It does.” He turned to Clare. “This must be rather thrilling to you. Do you know, I was most frightfully thrilled the first time I slept in a dug-out,” he went on conversationally. “It was in a bit of the line near Fricourt that we had just taken over from the French. I had a little cubby hole dug in the side of a communicating trench about twenty yards from its junction with the fire trench. There was a bunk like this and a couple of sheets of galvanized iron and four sandbags on top.” He pulled out his pipe and filled it. “But the bane of my life was a trench catapult that was in the neighbourhood. One of ours: not Jerry’s. A trench catapult, you know was a contrivance that might well have formed part of Caesar’s field artillery. It was just a large edition of a schoolboy’s catapult—a contraption of wood and iron, and the motive force was supplied by springs wound back by a handle and released by a trigger. A grenade placed on the instrument, was, when the trigger was pressed, propelled or not, as the case might be, in the direction of the enemy’s lines. I say was or was not, because instead of describing a graceful curve and alighting in the German trench, the bomb frequently dropped on the floor of the pit in which the catapult was mounted.” He struck a match and puffed at his pipe. “This eccentricity of the mediaeval weapon left open only two courses to its minions: either to bolt for their lives and leave the catapult to be blown to pieces, or to pick up the bomb and hurl it out of the pit. They were stout fellows those catapultists, I will say that for them, and the absurd affection they bore their primitive weapon was equalled I think, only by my hatred of the damned thing. Anyway they invariably flung the bomb out of the pit. This no doubt was in accordance with the best traditions of the army, King’s Regulations and all that, but when a man flings away a bomb that may at any moment explode and blow him to small bits, he is none too particular a
s to the direction in which it goes.”
“I should think not!” exclaimed Clare.
“That catapult pit was behind the fire trench and close to the communicating trench in which my cubby hole lay. To their honour, be it said, they seldom flung the bomb into the fire trench, but it frequently landed in the doorway of my dug-out, and bursting bombs are much alike be they of alleged friendly or enemy origin. As I have said, my roof consisted only of a couple of sheets of galvanized iron thinly covered with earth from which a torn piece of iron protruded at one corner. Every scrap of flying metal in the neighbourhood rendezvoused on this piece, which was as full of holes as a sieve; and the violent impact of metal upon galvanized iron doesn’t help one to sleep.”
“That was all Charles thought about—sleep,” commented Baron.
Pagan ignored the interruption. “I remonstrated with those catapultists. They were reasonable fellows and answered me with fair words. But stray bombs continued to detonate in the immediate neighbourhood of my dug-out; and so one dark night when the catapultists were snoring in their dug-out I took a sandbag full of detonated bombs to that pit and left them there under the catapult to fulfil their destiny.”
“But how terribly immoral!” smiled Clare.
“Not half as immoral as their language in the morning,” retorted Pagan.
A long pause followed. Clare’s eyes strayed round the cold grey concrete walls of the dug-out, lit by the two candle flames. Pagan glanced covertly at his wrist watch. Baron shifted uncomfortably on the bunk. “Um yes, pity we didn’t bring cards,” he murmured. “Nothing much we could play here.”
“Except hop-scotch,” said Pagan eyeing the dusty floor.
“Hop-scotch!” exclaimed Baron. “By Jove, Charles, do you remember that game of hop-scotch we had on the Bray–Corbie road back in ’16?”
Pagan nodded and signalled with his eyes for Baron to continue.
Baron cleared his throat. “That was rather amusing,” he went on. “We were out on a tactical scheme, a rearguard as a matter of fact, and the chap who was supposed to be chasing us, a poisonous cove called Groucher, was slow off the mark. Anyway there we sat on the top of the ridge between the Ancre and the Somme and waited and yawned, and yawned and waited. Charles went to sleep I believe: he usually did. Anyway he woke up at last and being a resourceful cove, suggested a game of hop-scotch. I had never played this refined game before—nor have I since for that matter. Anyway, Charles showed us how to play—that is me and poor old G. B., Bretherton, who went west in ’18.
“Well, there we were in a most exciting part of the game with sous all over the road and marks scraped in the dust. Suddenly along comes a car with a flag fluttering over the radiator—the Divisional General! G. B., who was one of the coolest coves I’ve ever met, managed to wipe out most of the marks on the road as he sprang to attention, and between the three of us we managed to cover most of the sous with our feet. But the A. D. C. spotted one, which of course Charles pocketed, though it wasn’t his, and then I was thrown off my guard by the General asking some silly question or other. It was about whether one of my men could see the section he was keeping touch with, I believe. Anyway, I being full of military zeal and all that, took him along to prove to him what a clever fellow I was and what a fool he was, and left three or four sous lying on the road where I had been standing. Of course the A. D. C. being a perfect little gent., picked them up, and that fellow Charles there pockets them and with a face like wood remarks loudly to the A. D. C. that I must have a hole in my pocket. Meantime I have to talk seriously to the General and say, ‘Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full’. ”
“And that is how you won the war, Dicky, is it!” smiled Clare.
Pagan knocked out his pipe and nodded gratefully at Baron. “I once won a tarpaulin in rather comic circumstances,” he said. “It was when that disgusting fellow Hubbard went on leave and left me in charge of B. Company. We were bivouacking in a little hollow at the time, wedged in with a couple of million other troops, and we badly wanted a tarpaulin for the men. The town major, a disgusting little tick, had a tarpaulin, but would he part with it! Not he.
“Well, one day Melford, back at headquarters, sent up to know whether we would like to have the battalion water cart. I said, ‘Yes.’ But the fool of a Quartermaster sent it up full, so that the poor wretched horse had to pull that heavy weight up the steep hill to the Bray-Corbie road and then trek to our camp. During the night the C. Q. M. S. woke me up to say that the wretched horse was ill—and no wonder. Well, we gave the poor beast some pills and trotted it up and down for a bit, and then it lay down and died there in the middle of sleeping thousands.
“The C. Q. M. S. said we should have to get it out of the way and bury it. I said, ‘No. Leave it where it is. It hasn’t got a mark on it and no one will know whose it is.’
“In the morning there was the deuce of a fuss. The town-major running round like a dog with four tails, because, you see, he is the fellow who is responsible for the general cleanliness of the camp, and of course a dead horse is an abomination. The difficulty was to get somebody to bury it, because although the town-major is responsible for the camp he is neither fish, flesh nor good red herring and has no power to detail men from other units in the camp, and his own staff usually consists of an ancient batman with one eye and a game leg. Anyway, the sun rose higher and higher, and still our poor old horse lay out there bang in the middle of the camp.
“Just after midday the A. P. M. came up and dropped into my hut for a chat. Of course he was livid about that horse, and thirsting for the town-major’s blood. Just then the town-major came along, and the A. P. M. gave it him good and proper. The town-major said he couldn’t get a fatigue party and all that, and the A. P. M. cursed him hot and strong and ended up with, ‘Here, Pagan’s a good chap; he’ll give you a fatigue party if you ask him nicely.’ I said I would be charmed to do so, but unfortunately all my men were employed on most important work for Corps, etc., etc. Then I suddenly became magnanimous. ‘Look here,’ I said. ‘You’ve got a tarpaulin that I badly want. If you let me have that tarpaulin, I will stretch a point and let you have a fatigue party.’ The town-major hesitated, but the A. P. M. chipped in with, ‘Give him his old tarpaulin or you will have to dig a hole with your toothpick and bury the horse with your own hands.’
“And so the town-major thanked me warmly, the A. P. M. said I was an obliging chap, and we got the tarpaulin and buried our own horse.”
Baron laughed. “That was a good bit of work, Charles. You see, Clare,” he explained, “there was not enough stuff to go round, and what there was, was tied up with all sorts of dam silly red tape. The men whose officers were not smart enough to get things by hook or by crook went without, and that made all the difference between a happy and a grousing battalion. So you see, old Charles isn’t really such a scoundrel as he would like you to believe.”
She looked at him with her head on one side. “He is not really the criminal type,” she smiled.
Pagan bowed. “A mere amateur, I am afraid,” he murmured. He glanced again at his wrist watch and stood up. “Really the most sensible thing would be to go to sleep,” he said with a smile at Clare. “I assure you that those wire netting bunks can be quite comfortable, and—well, early to bed and early to rise, you know!”
She looked in silence from one to the other. Baron lit a cigarette nonchalantly. “I think so too,” he agreed. “And if Clare wants to preserve that schoolgirl complexion!”
She looked back again at Pagan. “If you wish it,” she said.
“Well, it’s really the only sensible thing to do, don’t you think?”
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I am going to smoke another pipe, if you don’t object, and then I shall probably go to by-byes too,” he answered easily. “That is if old Baron doesn’t snore too loudly.” He began taking off his mackintosh. “We will make you so comfortable on that bunk that you will think that you are sleeping at
the Ritz.”
“It is no good taking that off,” she said firmly, “because I refuse to have it.”
“But it will not be too warm, you know,” he protested.
“All the more reason why you should keep your coat,” she retorted. “Yes, I mean it,” she went on in answer to his look. “Really. I go to sleep on that funny bed without your coat or not at all.”
He shrugged his shoulders with a look of comic resignation. “Well, we will have to make you a pillow anyway,” he said. He dragged a small white muffler from the pocket of his coat, took his own soft hat and Baron’s, and rolled them up into a loose ball. “That is the best I can do for you—a poor thing but mine own.” He arranged the improvised pillow at the head of the bunk. “Now then, say your prayers,” he smiled. “God bless Uncle Charles and make me a good girl, and then it’s shut eyes.”
She pulled off her hat and shook out her shingled hair. Then she slipped on to the bunk and laid her head upon the pillow.
“All right?” he asked.
“Splendid.”
“Good. Change your mind and have my coat over your feet,” he pressed earnestly.
She shook her head emphatically and smiled up at him. “Good night, Uncle Charles,” she murmured.
He picked up the little tweed hat from the floor and placed it on the foot of the bunk. “Good night, my child,” he answered soberly.
Baron lifted the two candles from their beds in the mound of earth. He blew out one of them and carried the other to the end of the dug-out and placed it on the floor behind a heap of debris so that the bunk and its occupant were in shadow. He and Pagan sat down on the floor side by side with their backs against the wall.
CHAPTER TEN
I
PAGAN slowly refilled his pipe and lighted it from the candle. Baron also pulled out his pipe and lighted it. Neither spoke. The single candle beside them threw grotesque shadows of their heads and shoulders upon the wall. The pile of rubbish behind which it stood threw the remainder of the dug-out into shadow. The bunk at the far end was dimly discernible. Clare’s gentle regular breathing was just audible in the intense stillness.