“That settles it,” said Pug firmly. “I’m goin’ to lay for that bloke till I gets ’im, an’ then when we advance I’ll ’ave ’is ’elmet.”
He lay for several minutes, watching the spot where the German was concealed as a cat watches a mouse-hole, and when his patience was rewarded by a glimpse of gray uniform he took steady aim, carefully squeezed the trigger until he felt the faint check of its second pull-off, held his breath, and gave the final squeeze, all in exact accordance with the school of musketry instructions. The patch of gray vanished, and Pug could not tell whether he had scored a hit, but almost immediately he saw the spike and rounded top of the helmet lift cautiously into sight. Again Pug took slow and deliberate aim but then hesitated, “Tchick-tchicked” softly between his teeth, aimed again and fired. The helmet vanished with a jerk. “Lookin’ over the edge of ’is ’ole, ’e was,” said Pug. “An’ at first I didn’t like to shoot for fear of spoilin’ that ’elmet. But arter all,” he conceded cheerfully, “I dunno’ that it wouldn’t maybe improve it as a fust-class sooven-eer to ’ave a neat little three-oh-three ’ole drilled in it.”
“Did you drill it?” asked his companion directly.
“Dunno,” admitted Pug, “but I’m keepin’ a careful eye on ’im, an’ I’ll soon know if ’e moves again.”
But in the process of keeping a careful eye Pug was tempted for an instant into keeping a less careful head under cover than the situation demanded. A bullet leaped _whutt_ past within an inch of his ear and he dropped flat to earth with an oath. “That was ’im,” he said, “I saw the flash of ’is rifle. Looks like ’e’s got me piped off, an’ it’s goin’ to be ’im or me for it.”
Chick and another man in the same hole had been busy shooting at any mark that presented, but when their every appearance above ground began to be greeted by an unpleasantly close bullet, they ceased to fire and squatted back in the hole to watch Pug and the conducting of his duel. A dozen times he and the German fired, each drawing or returning instant shot for shot, Pug moving from one spot to another in the shell crater, pushing his rifle out slowly, lifting his head cautiously an inch at a time.
Over their heads the great shells shrieked and rushed, round them crackled a spattering rifle fire, the occasional hammering of a machine gun, the rolling crash and whirr of bursting shells and flying splinters. Wide out to right and left of them, far to their front and rear the roar of battle ran, long-thundering and unbroken, in a deafening chorus of bellowing guns, the vibrating rattle of rifles and machine guns, the sharp detonations and reports of shells and bombs and grenades. But Pug and, in lesser degree, his companions, were quite heedless of all these things, of how the battle moved or stayed still. For them the struggle had boiled down into the solitary duel between Pug and his German; the larger issues were for the moment completely overshadowed, as in war they so often are, by the mere individual and personal ones. Pug insisted in finishing off his duel single-handed, declining to have the others there interfere in it. “It’s ’im or me for it,” he repeated, “fair dinkum. An’ I’m goin’ to get ’im _and_ ’is ’elmet on my blinkin’ own.”