And he made it unmistakably plain that what he meant was:

"Do you think I'm such a fool as to let you go? I'll see you d.a.m.ned first!"

Thus it was that Pickersd.y.k.e, a disillusioned and a baffled man, stared out of the window with wrath and bitterness in his heart. For he wanted to go back to "the old troop"; he was obsessed with the idea almost to the exclusion of everything else. He craved for the old faces and the old familiar atmosphere as a drug-maniac craves for morphia. It was his right, he had earned it by nine months of drudgery--and who the devil, anyway, he felt, was this old fool to thwart him?

Extravagant plans for vengeance flitted through his mind. Supposing he were to lose half a dozen wagons or thousands of rounds of howitzer ammunition, would his colonel get sent home? Not he--he'd blame his adjutant, and the latter would quite possibly be court-martialled.

Should he hide all the colonel's clothes and only reveal their whereabouts when the application had been forwarded? Should he steal his whisky (without which it was doubtful if he could exist), put poison in his tea, or write an anonymous letter to headquarters accusing him of espionage? He sighed--ingenuity, his valuable ally on many a doubtful occasion, failed him now. Then it occurred to him to appeal to one Lorrison, who was the captain of his old battery, and whom he had known for years as one of his subalterns.

"DEAR LORRISON," he wrote,

"I've just had an interview with my old man and he won't agree to my transfer. I'm afraid it's a wash-out unless something can be done quickly, as I suppose Jordan will be promoted very soon." (Jordan was the senior subaltern.) "You know how much I want to get back in time for the big show. Can you do anything?

Sorry to trouble you, and now I must close.

"Yours, "W. PICKERSd.y.k.e."

Then he summoned his servant. Gunner Scupham was an elderly individual with grey hair, a dignified deportment, and a countenance which suggested extreme honesty of soul but no intelligence whatsoever, which fact was of great a.s.sistance to him in the perpetration of his more complicated villainies. He had not been Pickersd.y.k.e's storeman for many years for nothing. His devotion was a by-word, but his familiarity was sometimes a little startling.

"'E won't let us go," announced Pickersd.y.k.e.

"Strafe the blighter!" replied Scupham, feelingly. "I'm proper fed up with this 'ere column job."

"Get the office bike, take this note to Captain Lorrison, and bring back an answer. Here's a pa.s.s."

Scupham departed, grumbling audibly. It meant a fifteen-mile ride, the day was warm, and he disliked physical exertion. He returned late that evening with the answer, which was as follows:--

"DEAR PICKERS,

"Curse your fool colonel. Jordan may go any day, and if we don't get you we'll probably be stuck with some child who knows nothing. Besides, we want you to come. The preliminary bombardment is well under way, so there's not much time. Meet me at the B.A.C.[13] headquarters to-morrow evening at eight and we'll fix up something. In haste,

"Yours ever, "T. LORRISON."

[13] Brigade ammunition column.

There are people who do not believe in luck. But if it was not luck which a.s.sisted Pickersd.y.k.e by producing the events which followed his receipt of that note, then it was Providence in a genial and most considerate mood. He spent a long time trying to think of a reasonable excuse for going to see Lorrison, but he might have saved himself the trouble. Some light-hearted fool had sent up shrapnel instead of high explosive to the very B.A.C. that Pickersd.y.k.e wanted to visit. Angry telephone messages were coming through, and the colonel at once sent his adjutant up to offer plausible explanations.

Pickersd.y.k.e covered a lot of ground that afternoon. It was necessary to find an infuriated artillery brigadier and persuade him that the error was not likely to occur again, and was in any case not really the fault of the D.A.C. section commander. It was then necessary to find this latter and make it clear to him that he was without doubt the most incompetent officer in the Allied forces, and that the error was entirely due to his carelessness. And it was essential to arrange for forwarding what was required.

Lorrison arrived punctually and evidently rather excited.

"What price the news?" he said at once.

Pickersd.y.k.e had heard none. He had been far too busy.

"We're for it at last--going to bombard all night till 4.30 a.m.--every bally gun in the army as far as I can see. And we've got orders to be ready to move in close support of the infantry if they get through. _To move!_ Just think of that after all these months!"

Pickersd.y.k.e swore as he had not done since he was a rough-riding bombardier.

"And that's boxed _my_ chances," he ended up.

"Wait a bit," said Lorrison. "There's a vacancy waiting for you if you'll take it. We got pretty badly 'crumped'[14] last night. The Boches put some big 'hows' and a couple of 'pip-squeak' batteries on to us just when we were replenishing. They smashed up several wagons and did a lot of damage. Poor old Jordan got the devil of a shaking--he was thrown about ten yards. Lucky not to be blown to bits, though. Anyway, he's been sent to hospital."

[14] Sh.e.l.led.

He looked inquiringly at Pickersd.y.k.e. The latter's face portrayed an unholy joy.

"Will I take his place?" he cried. "Lummy! I should think I would. Don't care what the colonel says afterwards. When can I join? Now?"

"As soon as I've seen about getting some more wagons from the B.A.C.

we'll go up together," answered Lorrison.

Pickersd.y.k.e, who had no conscience whatever on occasions such as this, sent a message to his colonel to say that he was staying up for the night (he omitted to say precisely where!), as there would be much to arrange in the morning. To Scupham he wrote--

"Collect all the kit you can and come up to the battery at once. _Say nothing._"

He was perfectly aware that he was doing a wildly illegal thing. He felt like an escaped convict breathing the air of freedom and making for his home and family. Forty colonels would not have stopped him at that moment.

II

The major commanding the ----th Battery sat in his dug-out examining a large-scale trench map. His watch, carefully synchronised with those of the staff, lay on the table in front of him. Outside, his six guns were firing steadily, each concussion (and there were twelve a minute) shaking everything that was not a fixture in the little room. Hundreds of guns along miles of front and miles of depth were taking part in the most stupendous bombardment yet attempted by the army. From "Granny,"

the enormous howitzer that fired six times an hour at a range of seventeen thousand yards, to machine-guns in the front line trenches, every available piece of ordnance was adding its quota to what const.i.tuted a veritable h.e.l.l of noise.

The major had been ordered to cut the wire entanglements between two given points and to stop firing at 4.30 a.m. precisely. He had no certain means of knowing whether he had completed his task or not. He only knew that his "lines of fire," his range, and his "height of burst"

as previously registered in daylight were correct, that his layers could be depended upon, and that he had put about a thousand rounds of shrapnel into fifty yards of front. At 4.29 he rose and stood, watch in hand, in the doorway of his dug-out. A man with a megaphone waited at his elbow. The major, war-worn though he was, was still young enough in spirit to be thrilled by the mechanical regularity of his battery's fire. This perfection of drill was his work, the result of months and months of practice, of loving care, and of minute attention to detail.

Dawn was beginning to creep into the sky, and he could just distinguish the silhouettes of the two right-hand guns. The flash as one of them fired revealed momentarily the figures of the gunners grouped round the breech like demons round some spectral engine of destruction. Precisely five seconds afterwards a second flash denoted that the next gun had fired--and so on in sequence from right to left until it was the turn of Number One again.

"Stop!" said the major, when the minute hand of his watch was exactly over the half-hour.

"Stop!" roared the man with the megaphone.

It was as if the order had been heard all along the entire front. The bombardment ceased almost abruptly, and rifle and machine-gun fire became audible again. On a colossal scale the effect was that of the throttling down of a powerful motor-car whose engine had been allowed to race. Then, not many moments afterwards, from far away to the eastward there came faint, confused sounds of shouts and cheering. It was the infantry, the long-suffering, tenacious, wonderful infantry charging valiantly into the cold grey dawn along the avenues prepared by the guns.

For Pickersd.y.k.e it had been a night of pure joy, unspoilt by any qualms of conscience. He had been welcomed at the battery as a kind of returned wanderer and given a section of guns at once. The major--who feared no man's wrath, least of all that of a dug-out D.A.C. commander--had promised to back him up if awkward questions were asked. Pickersd.y.k.e had only one cause for disappointment--the whole thing had gone too smoothly. He was bursting with technical knowledge, he could have repaired almost any breakdown, and had kept a keen look-out for all ordinary mistakes. But nothing went wrong and no mistakes were made. In this battery the liability of human error had been reduced to a negligible minimum. Pickersd.y.k.e had had nothing further to do than to pa.s.s orders and see that they were duly received. Nevertheless he had loved every moment of it, for he had come into his own--he was back in the old troop, taking part in a "big show." As he observed to the major whilst they were drinking hot coffee in the dug-out afterwards--

"Even if I do get court-martialled for desertion, sir, that last little lot was worth it!"

And he grinned as does a man well pleased with the success of his schemes. To complete his satisfaction, Scupham appeared soon afterwards bringing up a large bundle of kit and a few luxuries in the way of food.

It transpired that he had presented himself to the last-joined subaltern of the D.A.C. and had bluffed that perplexed and inexperienced officer into turning out a cart to drive him as far as the battery wagon line, whence he had come up on an ammunition wagon.

It was almost daylight when the battery opened fire again, taking its orders by telephone now from the F.O.O.,[15] who was in close touch with the infantry and could see what was happening. The rate of fire was slow at first; then it suddenly quickened, and the range was increased by a hundred yards. Some thirty sh.e.l.ls went shrieking on their mission and then another fifty yards were added. The infantry was advancing steadily, and just as steadily, sixty or seventy yards in front of their line, the curtain of protecting shrapnel crept forward after the retiring enemy. At one point the attack was evidently held up for a while; the battery changed to high explosive and worked up to its maximum speed, causing Lorrison to telephone imploring messages for more and still more ammunition.

[15] Forward observing officer.

The long-expected order to advance, when at last it came, nearly broke the major's heart.