They were amazingly calm, those laddies at the telephones. In all that hideous, never-ending din, they never grew excited. Their voices were calm and steady as they repeated the orders that came to them. I have seen girls at hotel switchboards, expert operators, working with conditions made to their order, who grew infinitely more excited at a busy time, when many calls were coming in and going out. Those men might have been at home, talking to a friend of their plans for an evening's diversion, for all the nervousness or fussiness they showed. Up there, on the Pimple, I had seen Normabell, the eyes of the battery. Here I was watching its ears. And, to finish the metaphor, to work it out, I was listening to its voice. Its brazen tongues were giving voice continually. The guns--after all, everything else led up to them. They were the reason for all the rest of the machinery of the battery, and it was they who said the last short word. There was a good deal of rough joking and laughter in the battery. The Canadian gunners took their task lightly enough, though their work was of the hardest--and of the most dangerous, too. But jokes ran from group to group, from gun to gun. They were constantly kidding one another, as an American would say, I think. If a correction came for one gun that showed there had been a mistake in sighting after the last orders--if, that is, the gunners, and not the distant observers, were plainly at fault--there would be a good-natured outburst of chaffing from all the others. But, though such a spirit of lightness prevailed, there was not a moment of loafing. These men were engaged in a grim, deadly task, and every once in a while I would catch a black, purposeful look in a man's eyes that made me realize that, under all the light talk and laughter there was a perfect realization of the truth. They might not show, on the surface, that they took life and their work seriously. Ah, no! They preferred, after the custom of their race, to joke with death. And so they were doing quite literally. The Germans knew perfectly well that there was a battery somewhere near the spot where I had found my gunners. Only the exact location was hidden from them, and they never ceased their efforts to determine that. Fritz's airplanes were always trying to sneak over to get a look. An airplane was the only means of detection the Canadians feared. No--I will not say they feared it! The word fear did not exist for that battery! But it was the only way in which there was a tolerable chance, even, for Fritz to locate them, and, for the sake of the whole operation at that point, as well as for their own interest, they were eager to avoid that.