“He won’t get anything for it, of course,” said Anstruther. “You don’t get medals for playing tin whistles; and anyhow, there was no one to report it. But—yes, I’d like to have been that chap.” He rose and stretched himself, taking advantage of a section of undamaged parapet. “Brother Boche is rather late in beginning his hate this morning, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps he’s given up hating as a bad job,” Wally suggested.
“We’ll miss the dear old thing if he really means to leave us alone,” said Anstruther. “Just as well if he does, though: our line is painfully thin, and it’s evident to anyone that our guns are short of ammunition: we’re giving them about one shell to twenty of theirs. And don’t they know it! They send us enormous doses of high-explosive shells, and in return we tickle them feebly with a little shrapnel. They must chuckle!”
“I suppose England will wake up and make munitions for us when we’re all wiped out,” said Garrett, scornfully. “They’re awfully cheery over there: theatres and restaurants packed, business as usual, bull-dog grit, and all the rest of it: Parliament yapping happily, and strikes twice a week. And our chaps trying to fight for ’em, and dying for want of ammunition to do it with. I suppose they think we’re rather lazy not to make it in our spare time!”
“I’m afraid they won’t appoint me dictator just yet,” Blake remarked. “If they would, I’d have every striker and slacker out here: not to fight, but to mend barbed-wire, clean up trenches, and do the general dirty work. First-rate tonic for a disgruntled mind. And I’d send what was left of them to the end of the world afterwards. Will you have them in Australia, Linton?”
“Thanks; we’ve plenty of troubles of our own,” Jim returned hastily. “Don’t you think we were dumping-ground for your rubbish for long enough?”
“You were a large, empty place, and you had to be peopled,” said Blake, grinning. “And a good many of them were very decent people, I believe.”
“Well, they might well be,” Jim responded—“you sent them out for stealing a sheep or a shirt or a medicine-bottle: one poor kid of six was sent out for life for stealing jam-tarts. Many excellent men must have begun life by stealing jam-tarts: I did, myself!”