Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/227

Rh We paused at the gate of the colonel's cottage, waiting for the others to come up. A subaltern rounded the hedge.

“Where are the others?" the colonel asked irritably.

"Taking it in a long line, sir," the subaltern said. “It seemed safer that way."

The colonel led me into his dining-room, and, while we waited for the others, ordered tea. Across the wall were spread his range charts and his tir de barrage plan like an architect's blueprint

“It makes an absolute curtain of shells on their trenches," he said. “Where's that tea?"

A private with a startled expression left the room, returning with a huge, blue-patterned tea pot. The others straggled in. We sat down and drank, and ate biscuits, and listened to the gun roar, which, even with the approach of night, scarcely diminished. Suddenly the colonel laughed. He fumbled in his desk and found a clipping from one of London's most revered newspapers.

Seen this, Williams?"

Williams scanned the clipping and passed it on. It was a letter from an officer to his father, reciting a strange ornithological experience in this neighbourhood. During several nights this young