Page:Ambulance 464 by Julien Bryan.djvu/174

 away. The man with the phones, he told me, was trying to learn what the Germans were doing across the way; he could hear them digging and even talking, with his apparatus. If they continued to work there much longer the French would soon set off their mine and blow up every Hun within a hundred yards. I got a photo of them at work, with a sack of earth for a support for my camera, and my gas. mask held in one hand above my head as a tray for the flashlight powder. It was pitch-black when we emerged into the open again. In front of us a couple of Frenchmen were repairing barbed-wire out in No Man's Land and to the left a hand-grenade duel was in progress. I thought it was time to get back to the post but Amulot said no. He was picture-crazy and had to take me to two other mines, and also to a place where they had a new trench gun which shoots funny little torpedoes by compressed air. This took up fully an hour more and when I again remarked that I had better be leaving, he said that he wanted me to hear a Boche machine gun first. And what did he do but dash out into No Man's Land and pound on some stones with a pick so that the enemy would hear him. Luckily no star shell went up very close to him while he was out, or he would surely have been potted. I heard the, machine gun very distinctly, however. I think he had had more pinard for supper than was good for him. It