“Just what I said,” he answered, with a smile. “We were working day and night to excavate a gun-cavern, the fire from which would make that troublesome position untenable for the Austrian machine-gunners. In the meantime we had to stick it out as best we could, for the least weakening of our force at this point would have been the signal for an Austrian attack which might well have left them in possession of the pass. By doing most of our moving about at night we were getting on fairly well until, opening up at an unexpectedly early hour one morning, they killed a good many more of us than I like to think of. “It was at this juncture that Captain X---- over there, who had had a bullet through his hat, came to me with a drawing in his hand, and said that he had just figured out that, between the third and fourth towers of the _teleferica_, there was a point from which the Austrian machine-gun position could be enfiladed with deadly effect. “If our position had not been really serious I should probably never have listened to such a mad proposal. As it was, I entered into it heart and soul. We hung the platform of the machine-gun on to the cable at an angle which would make it easy to elevate and range on the Austrian position above. Then--as a happy afterthought--we bent a sheet of bullet-proof steel for a shield on the exposed side, erected a low platform on which the gun would rest securely, and--the first and last armoured _teleferica_ was complete. Between X---- and his helper, the armour and the gun, the weight was about double that which the _teleferica_ was supposed to carry, but I knew there was a wide margin of safety allowed for, and had no misgivings on that score. With X---- and his assistant crouched low on either side of the gun, and with a black tarpaulin thrown loosely over the whole, she looked as much like an ordinary load of junk going down for repairs as anyone could wish. “The Austrians, who had been busy for an hour peppering the zigzags of the path up to the trenches at the lip of the pass, took no notice of the innocent-looking load slipping down the _teleferica_. The relieved men from above, dodging in quick rushes past the exposed stretches of the zigzags, offered them far more exciting practice than a load of old gear. The latter disappeared from our sight at the second tower, reappeared at the third, and was in full view when X---- ‘unmasked’ and opened up. We could even follow the line of brown dust-spurts on the face of the cliff as the bullets ranged upward to their mark. The fire of the two Austrian machine-guns ceased instantly, and never resumed. Probably the gunners were killed before ever they had a chance to turn round their guns and reply to the sudden attack from the air.