The ground is covered with weedy
grass--disappointed hay--which makes silent progress a fairly simple
matter. The bombers move forward in extended order searching for the
saphead. Simson, in the centre, pauses occasionally to listen, and his
well-drilled line pauses with him. Sergeant Carfrae calls stertorously
upon the left. Out on the right is young M'Snape, tingling.
They are half-way across now, and the moon is marking time behind a
cloud.
Suddenly there steals to the ears of M'Snape--apparently from the
recesses of the earth just in front of him--a deep, hollow sound,
the sound of men talking in some cavernous space. He stops dead, and
signals to his companions to do likewise. Then he listens again. Yes,
he can distinctly hear guttural voices, and an occasional _clink,
clink_. The saphead has been reached, and digging operations are in
progress.
A whispered order comes down the line that M'Snape is to
"investigate." He wriggles forward until his progress is arrested by a
stunted bush. Very stealthily he rises to his knees and peers over. As
he does so, a chance star-shell bursts squarely over him, and comes
sizzling officiously down almost on to his back. His head drops like
a stone into the bush, but not before the ghostly magnesium flare has
shown him what he came out to see--a deep shell-crater. The crater is
full of Germans.
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