Page:Gibbs--The yellow dove.djvu/14

 “''’Im! ’Oo’s ’im'', I’d like to arsk?”

“Stow yer jaw, cawn’t yer ’ear? Ole Yaller-belly, agayn.”

The sounds were now clearly audible and to the south a series of rapid detonations shivered the air.

“There goes ‘Johnny look in the air.’ Cawn’t get ’im, though. ’Strewth! ’E’s a cool one—’e is!”

A hoarse order rang out from the trenches behind them—and the men ran for cover. The fog lifted a little and a shaft of light touched the leaden gray of the sea like the sheen on a dirty gun-barrel. The nearer high-angle guns were speaking now—fruitlessly, for the sounds seemed to come from directly overhead. The fog lifted again and a shaft of pale sunlight shot across the line of entrenchments.

“There ’e is, not wastin’ no time—’e ayn’t.”

“Yus. But they’re arfter ’im. There comes hyviashun. O ’ell!”

The expletive in a final tone of disgust for the fog had fallen again, completely obliterating the air-craft and its pursuers.

“’Oo’s Yaller-belly?” asked a smooth-faced youth who still wore the sallow of London under his coat of windburn.

“You’re one of the new lot, ayn’t yer? You’ll know by soon ’oo Yaller-belly is, won’t ’e, Bill? Pow! That’s ’im—them sharp ones.”

“Garn!” said the one called Bill. “’E never ’its anythink but the dirt an’ ’e cawn’t ’elp that.”

“’Tayn’t ’cos ’e don’t try. ’Ear ’em? Nice droppin’s fer a dove, ayn’t they?”

“Dove?” said the newcomer.

“Yus. Tubs the swine calls ’em”

“Tawb, yer blighter.”