houghts of
telephonic worries, he had time to consider outside matters. For nearly
ten minutes the two men listened, and talked in short sentences, and
listened again. The rattle of rifle fire was sustained and unbroken,
and punctuated liberally at short intervals by the boom of exploding
grenades and bombs. Decidedly the whole action was heavier--or coming
back closer to them.

The sergeant was moving across the door to open it and listen when a
shell struck the house above them. The building shook violently, down
to the very flags of the stone floor; from overhead, after the first
crash, there came a rumble of falling masonry, the splintering cracks
of breaking wood-work, the clatter and rattle of cascading bricks and
tiles. A shower of plaster grit fell from the cellar roof and settled
thick upon the papers littered over the table. The sergeant halted
abruptly with his hand on the cellar door, three or four of the
sleepers stirred restlessly, one woke for a minute sufficiently to
grumble curses and ask "what the blank was that"; the rest slept on
serene and undisturbed. The sergeant stood there until the last sounds
of falling rubbish had ceased. "A shell," he said, and drew a deep
breath. "Plunk into upstairs somewhere."

The signaler made no answer. He was quite busy at the moment
rearranging his disturbed papers and blowing the dust and grit off
them.

A telephonist at another table commenced to take and write down a
message. It came from the forward trench on the left, and merely said
briefly that the attack on the center was spreading to them and that
they were holding it with some difficulty. The message was sent up to
the O.C. "Whoever the O.C. may be," as the sergeant said softly. "If
the Colonel was upstairs when that shell hit, there's another O.C. now,
most like." But the Colonel had escaped that shell and sent a message
back to the left trench to hang on, and that he had asked for
reenforcements.

"He did ask," said the sergeant grimly, "but when he's going to get 'em
is a different pair o' shoes. It'll take those messengers most of an
hour to get there, even if they dodge all the lead on the way."

As the minutes passed, it became more and more plain that the need for
reenforcements was growing more and more urgent. The sergeant was
standing now at the open door of the cellar, and the noise of the
conflict swept down and clamored and beat about them.

"Think I'll just slip up and have a look roun