d. "You see the grey house over there!... Can you
see it?... Good!... An enemy machine-gun is believed to be there.... I
want you to fire on that house.... There's the point on the map."

"Sorry, sir, my wire to the battery is not through yet--I've just been
out on it."

The colonel looked at his watch. "It's half-past eleven now. Your line
ought to be through by this time."

"Yes, sir; it's been through once, but it went half an hour ago. I
expect my signallers back any minute."

"Very well! you can be working out your switch angle and your angle of
sight while you wait."

Johns had now got his battery to work, and the sight of his shells
bursting among the hedges and shrubs fired his Celtic enthusiasm and
dissipated the nervousness he had felt in the colonel's presence. "Look
at that! isn't that a fine burst?" he called, clutching my arm,--"and
see that one. Isn't it a topper?"

An exclamation from the colonel, who had stood sphinx-like, his glasses
directed upon the grey house, made every one turn. "I've spotted him,"
he called, his voice vibrating. "He's at the top-floor window nearest
to us.... There he goes again.... I heard the 'ping' and saw dust come
out of the window.... Now then, is that line through yet?"

The line wasn't through, and the excitement of the hunt being upon us,
every one felt like cursing all telephone lines--they always did break
down when they were most wanted. The five minutes before this line was
reported to be through seemed an hour, and when the telephonist had
laboriously to repeat the orders, each one of us itched to seize the
telephone and shout ribald abuse at the man at the other end.

The first shell went into the trees behind the house. So did the round,
three hundred yards shorter in range, by which it had been hoped to
complete a plus and minus bracketing of the target. After a bold
shortening of the range, the subaltern, directing the shooting of A
Battery's guns, was about to order a wide deflection to the left, but
the colonel stopped him. "Your line is all right," he said. "It looks
as if you were too much to the right from the 'O.P.', but that's the
deceptiveness of flank observation. The range is short, that's all.
Give it another hundred yards and see what happens."

A direct hit resulted in twenty rounds, and there was jubilation in the
"O.P." M'Whirter of C Battery turned up, also Captain Hopton of B, and
preparations for a window-to-window searching and harry