But meantime the Subaltern took no chances. First he connected up a short switch which in the last extreme of haste would allow him with one touch of his finger to blow up his mine and himself with it. He buried or concealed the wires connecting the linked charges with the switch outside so as to have a chance of escape himself. He opened a portable telephone he had carried with him and joined up to the wire he had also carried in, and so was in touch with his Corporal and the world of the aboveground. All these things he did himself because there was no need to risk more than one man in case of a quick explosion. Then, his preparations complete, he sat down to wait and to listen to the thudding picks of the Germans. They were very near now, and with his ear to the wall the Subaltern could hear the shovels now as well as the picks. He shut his lamp off after a last look at his switch, his revolver, and the glistening walls and mud-ooze floor of his tunnel, and sat still in the darkness. Once he whispered an answer into the telephone to his Corporal, and once he flicked his lamp on an instant to glance at the watch on his wrist. Then he crouched still and silent again. The thumping of his heart nearly drowned the thud of the picks, he was shivering with excitement, and his mouth grew dry and leathery. He felt a desire to smoke, and had his case out and a cigarette in his lips when it occurred to him that, when the Germans broke through, the smell of the smoke would tell them instantly that they were in an occupied working. He counted on a certain amount of delay and doubt on their part when their picks first pierced his wall, and he counted on that pause again to give him time to escape. So he put the cigarette away, and immediately was overwhelmed with a craving for it. He fought it for five minutes that felt like five hours, and felt his desire grow tenfold with each minute. It nearly drove him to doing what all the risk, all the discomfort of his cramped position, all the danger, had not done--to creep out and fire the mine without waiting for that last instant when the picks would break through. It could make little difference, he argued to himself, in the movements of those above. What could five minutes more, or ten, or even fifteen, matter now? It might even be that he was endangering the success of the explosion by waiting, and it was perhaps wiser to crawl out at once and fire the mine--and he could safely light a cigarette then as soon as he was round the corner of the T. So he argued the matter out, fingering his cigarette-case and longing for the taste of the tobacco, and yet knowing in his inmost heart that he would not move, despite his arguments, until the first pick came through. He heard the strokes draw nearer and nearer, and now he held his breath and strained his eyes as each one was delivered. The instant he had waited for came in exactly the fashion he had expected--a thud, a thread of yellow light