“You wait until you get ’ome, and see it on the pictures,” said the Sergeant, who stood near them. “It’ll be a sight safer there. If you don’t know you ought to, that a trench full of white faces lookin’ up at a ’plane, is as good as sending a postcard to their spotter upstairs sayin’ the trench is occupied in force; and I don’t suppose,” he concluded, “you’re any more anxious than I am for that ’Un to be sendin’ a wireless to his guns, and ’avin’ this trench strafed like the last one was.” “From what I can see of it,” said Pug, “that ’Un up there was ’avin’ ’is ’ands too full to worrit about wot was goin’ on down ’ere.” “Well, anyhow,” said the Sergeant, “you needn’t keep yer eyes down lookin’ for sixpences any longer. Both the ’planes is out of sight.” “Well, I’m blowed,” said Pug, “if that’s not a sickener. ’Ere we ’as a fust-class fight, and us in the front seats for seein’ it, and they goes and shifts off so we don’t even know which side won.” And they never did. A minute later the anti-aircraft guns broke out into fire again, their peculiar singing reports easily distinguishable from the other gun fire, even as the distant reports of their shrapnel bursts in the air were distinguishable from the other sounds of many bursting shells near the ground. But which of the “Archibalds” were firing they did not know. They could only guess that one of the machines had been shot down, and that the anti-aircraft guns of the opposing side were endeavoring to bring down the victor--but which was the victor, and whether he escaped or not, was never known to the Stonewalls. “Bloomin’ Blind-Man’s-Buff, I calls it,” grumbled Pug. “Gropin’ round after ’Uns you can’t see, an’ gettin’ poked in the ribs without seein’ one--like Billy was.” CHAPTER VIII OVER THE TOP The long-delayed and long-expected crisis in the affairs of the Stonewalls came at last about midday, and they were moved up into the front line, into the battered trench held by the remains of another battalion. This line ran curving and zigzagging some fifty to a hundred yards beyond the shattered and shell-smitten fragments of a group of houses which stood on the grass-and weed-grown remains of a road. What was now the British front line of trench had been at one time a German communication trench in part of its length, and apparently some sort of support trench in another part. But throughout its whole length it had been so battered and wrecked, rent and riven asunder by shell fire, by light and heavy bombs of every sort and description, that it was all of much the same pattern--a comparatively wide ditch, filled up and choked to half its depth in some places by fallen walls and scattered sandbags, in other parts no more than a line of big and little shell-craters linked up by a shallow ditch, with a tangle of barbed wire flung out in coils and loops in front of the trench, with here and there a few strands run out and staked down during the night.