his physique moved smoothly; he was more free in the chest than he had been for months.
A single immense cannon, at a tremendous distance said something. Something sulky. Aroused in its sleep and protesting. But it was not a signal to begin anything. Too heavy. Firing at something at a tremendous distance. At Paris, maybe, or the North Pole, or the moon! They were capable of that, those fellows!
It would be a tremendous piece of frightfulness to hit the moon. Great gain in prestige. And useless. There was no knowing what they would not be up to, as long as it was stupid and useless. And, naturally, boring…. And it was a mistake to be boring. One went on fighting to get rid of those bores — as you would to get rid of a bore in a club.
It was more descriptive to call what had spoken a cannon than a gun — though it was not done in the best local circles. It was all right to call 75’s or the implements of the horse artillery “guns”; they were mobile and toy- like. But those immense things were cannons; the sullen muzzles always elevated. Sullen, like cathedral dignitaries or butlers. The thickness of barrel compared to the bore appeared enormous as they pointed at the moon, or Paris, or Nova Scotia.
Well, that cannon had not announced anything except itself! It was not the beginning of any barrage; our own fellows were not pooping off to shut it up. It had just announced itself, saying protestingly, “CAN… NON,” and its shell soaring away to an enormous height caught the reflection of the unrisen sun on its base. A shining disc, like a halo in flight…. Pretty! A pretty motive for a decoration, tiny pretty planes up on a blue sky amongst shiny, flying haloes! Dragon-flies amongst saints…. No, “with angels and archangels!”… Well, one had seen it!
Cannon…. Yes, that was the right thing to call them. Like the up-ended, rusted things that stuck up out of parades when one had been a child.
No, not the signal for a barrage! A good thing! One might as well say “Thank Goodness,” for the later they began the less long it lasted…. Less long it lasted was ugly alliteration. Sooner it was over was better…. No doubt half-past eight or at half-past eight to the stroke those boring fellows would let off their usual offering, probably plump, right on top of that spot…. As far as one could tell three salvoes of a dozen shells each at half-minute intervals between the salvoes. Perhaps salvoes was not the right word. Damn all artillery, anyhow!
Why did those fellows do it! Every morning at half-past eight; every afternoon at half-past two. Presumably just to show that they were still alive, and still boring. They were methodical. That was their secret. The secret of their boredom. Trying to kill them was like trying to shut up Liberals who would talk party politics in a nonpolitical club…. Had to be done, though! Otherwise the world was no place for… Oh, post-prandial naps!… Simple philosophy of the contest!… Forty minutes! And he glanced aside and upwards at the phosphorescent cockscomb! Within his mind something said that if he were only suspended up there….
He stepped once more on to the rifle-step and on to the bully-beef-case. He elevated his head cautiously: grey desolation sloped down and away F.R.R.R.r.r.r.! A gentle purring sound!
He was automatically back, on the duckboard, his breakfast hurting his chest. He said:
“By Jove! I got the fright of my life!” A laugh was called for; he managed it, his whole stomach shaking. And cold!
A head in a metal pudding-basin — a Suffolk type of blond head, pushed itself from a withdrawn curtain of sacking in the gravel wall beside him, at his back. A voice said with concern:
“There ain’t no beastly snipers, is there, sir. I did ’ope there would’n be henny beastly snipers ’ere. It gives such a beastly lot of extra trouble warning the men.”
Tietjens said it was a beastly skylark that almost walked into his mouth. The acting sergeant-major said with enthusiasm that them ’ere skylarks could fair scare the guts out of you. He remembered a raid in the dark, crawling on ’is ’ands ’n knees wen ’e put ’is ’and on a skylark on its nest. Never left ’is nest till ’is ’and was on ’im! Then it went up and fair scared the wind out of ’im. Cor! Never would ‘e forget that!
With an air of carefully pulling parcels out of a carrier’s cart he produced from the cavern behind the sacking two blinking assemblages of tubular khaki-clad limbs. They wavered to erectness, pink cheeses of faces yawning beside tall rifles and bayonets. The sergeant said:
“Keep yer ’eds down as you go along. You never knows!”
Tietjens told the lance-corporal of that party of two that his confounded gas-mask nozzle was broken. Hadn’t he seen that for himself? The dismembered object bobbed on the man’s chest. He was to go and borrow another from another man and see the other drew a new one at once.
Tietjens’ eyes were drawn aside and upwards. His knees were still weak. If he were levitated to the level of that thing he would not have to use his legs for support.
The elderly sergeant went on with enthusiasm about skylarks. Wonderful the trust they showed in hus ’uman beens! Never left ther nesteses till you trod on them tho hall ’ell was rockin’ around them.
An appropriate skylark from above and before the parapet made its shrill and heartless noise heard. No doubt the skylark that Tietjens had frightened — that had frightened him.
“Therd bin,” the sergeant went on still enthusiastically, pointing a hand in the direction of the noise, skylarks singing on the mornin’ of every straf’e’d ever bin in! Woner’ful trust in yumanity! Woner’ful hinstinck set in the fethered brest by the Halmighty! for ’oo was goin’ to ‘it a skylark on a battlefield?
The solitary Man dropped beside his long, bayonetted rifle that was muddied from stock to bayonet attachment. Tietjens said mildly that he thought the sergeant had got his natural history wrong. He must divide the males from the females. The females sat on the nest through obstinate attachment to their eggs; the males obstinately soared above the nests in order to pour out abuse at other male skylarks in the vicinity.
He said to himself that he must get the doctor to give him a bromide. A filthy state his nerves had got into unknown to himself. The agitation communicated to him by that bird was still turning his stomach round….
“Gilbert White of Shelbourne,” he said to the sergeant “called the behaviour of the female ‘storge’: a good word for it.” But, as for trust in humanity, the sergeant might take it that larks never gave us a thought. We were part of the landscape and if what destroyed their nests whilst they sat on them was a bit of H.E. shell or the coulter of a plough it was all one to them.
The sergeant said to the rejoined lance corporal whose box now hung correctly on his muddied chest:
“Now its HAY post you gotter wait at!” They were to go along the trench and wait where another trench ran into it and there was a great A in whitewash on a bit of corrugated iron that was half-buried. “You can tell a great HAY from a bull’s foot as well as another, can’t you Corporal?” patiently.
“Wen they Mills bombs come ’e was to send ‘is Man into Hay Cumpny dugout fer a fatigue to bring ’em along ’ere, but Hay Cumpny could keep ’
“An if they Mills bombs did’n’ come the corporal’d better manufacture them on ’is own. An not make no mistakes!”
The lance-corporal said “Yes sargint, no sargint!” and the two went desultorily wavering along the duckboards, grey silhouettes against the wet bar of light, equilibrating themselves with hands on the walls of the trench.
“Ju ’eer what the orfcer said, Corporal,” the one said to the other. “Wottever’ll’e say next! Skylarks not trust ‘uman beens in battles! Cor!” The other grunted and, mournfully, the voices died out.
The cockscomb-shaped splash became of overwhelming interest momentarily to Tietjens; at the same time his mind began upon abstruse calculation of chances. Of his chances! A bad sign when the mind takes to doing that. Chances of direct hits by shells, by rifle bullets, by grenades, by fragments of shells or grenades. By any fragment of metal impinging on soft flesh. He was aware that he was going to be hit in the soft spot behind the collar-bone. He was conscious of that spot — the right-hand one; he felt none of the rest of his body. It is bad when the mind takes charge like that. A bromide was needed. The doctor must give him one. His mind felt pleasure at the thought of the M.O. A pleasant little fellow of the no-account order that knows his job. And carried liquor cheerfully. Confoundedly cheerfully!
He saw the doctor — plainly! It was one of the plainest things he could see of this whole show…. The doctor, a slight figure, vault on to the parapet, like a vaulting horse for height; stand up in the early morning sun…. Blind to the world, but humming
The doctor said he had seen a Hun — probably an officer’s batman — cleaning a top-boot with an apron over his knees. The Hun had shied a boot-brush at him and he had shied his cap at the Hun. The blinking Hun, he called him! No doubt the fellow had blinked!
