Page:Lieutenant and Others (1915) by Sapper.djvu/27

 and as he reached a bend in the road the evening frightfulness in Ypres started. For ten minutes or a quarter of an hour a furious shelling went on, gradually dying away to comparative quiet again.

“Is anything happening?” he asked of a passing cavalry subaltern.

“Not that I know of,” returned the other in some surprise.

“But they’re shelling very hard, aren’t they?”

“That! That’s nothing—they do that most nights. Are you just out? Where are you going?”

“Wipers, I think. What’s it like?”

“Damnable,” rejoined the other tersely, and with that the conversation languished.

For all that, when Gerald pulled the blankets up to his chin that night the feeling in the pit of his stomach had gone. He felt that he’d started to bat—that he was actually in the dentist’s chair.

Three days of complete quiet passed—three days that seemed to give the lie to his laconic cavalry acquaintance. Occasionally a burst of shelling proclaimed that neither