otball--filled with
high explosive was fixed with a detonator, the lanyard to fire the charge
was adjusted. Then every one cleared out of the emplacement, while the
Sapper took his stand in the trench outside.

"Let her rip." The lanyard was pulled, and with a muffled crack the huge
cannon-ball rose into the air, its steel stalk swaying behind it.
Plainly visible, it reached its highest point, and still wobbling
drunkenly went swishing down on to G. 10 C. 54--or thereabouts. A roar
and a great column of black smoke rose from the German lines.

Almost before the report had died away, the gun was sponged out, and
another inebriated monster departed on its mission. But the Sapper was
already some way up the Haymarket. It was not his first view of a
trench-mortar firing.

A vicious crack from a rifle now and then broke the stillness, and
proclaimed that the sun was clearing away the morning mist, and that
rest-time was nearly over; while the sudden rattle of a machine gun close
by him, indulging in a little indirect fire at a well-known Hun gathering
place a thousand yards or so behind their lines, disturbed a covey of
partridges, which rose with an angry whirring of wings. Then came four
of those unmistakable faint muffled bursts from high above his head,
which betokened an aeroplane's morning gallop; and even as he
automatically jerked his head skywards, with a swishing noise something
buried itself in the earth not far away. It is well to remember that
even Archibald's offspring obey the laws of gravity, and shells from an
anti-aircraft gun, burst they never so high, descend sooner or later in
the shape of jagged fragments--somewhere. And if the somewhere is your
face, upturned to see the fun . . . !

The Sapper, with the remembrance fresh in his mind of a pal looking up in
just such a way a week before, quickly presented the top of his tin hat
to the skies, and all that might descend from them. There had been that
same swishing all round them as they stood watching some close shooting
at one of our own planes. He recalled the moment when he cried
suddenly--"Jove! they've got him!" He had turned as he spoke to see the
officer with him, slipping sideways, knees crumpling, body sagging.
"Good God! old man, what is it?" The question was involuntary, for as he
caught the limp figure--he knew.

The plane was all right: the German shells had not got it; but a piece of
shrapnel, the size of a match-box, had pas