"It's coming off!" Geoff told Phil enthusiastically, as he cantered up to the position held by the reserves of the Mahrattas. "We ain't going back, not a foot, and before nightfall we ought to have cleared them out of their trenches. A frontal attack, my boy, and not sufficient time nor sufficient guns to blow a way through them." Phil grinned up at his chum, a rather nervous little grin, for that was this gallant young fellow's way when he was excited and there were things doing. "Cold steel, eh?" he said. "Then the Mahrattas are the boys to do it." And yet the hours wore away with little else but gun-fire and rifle-volleys, while the men sweltered and sweated in their trenches. Imagine the heat in those narrow dug-outs, with a tropical sun pouring right down into them, and men congregated closely. "A charge ain't nuffin' to it," one of the men told a comrade, as he wiped the sweat from his forehead with a grimy, desert-stained hand. "Swelp me! I wish I was in at 'em. What's a-keepin' of us?" The comrade addressed stared back at him blankly, for indeed the question was entirely beyond him. Mechanically, abstractedly, he pulled a little cloth bag from his tunic pocket, and from another a clay of venerable appearance, and somewhat attenuated it is true, seeing that the stem had broken off midway, and slowly stuffed the bowl with the weed he favoured. Just as slowly, just as abstractedly, he applied a lighted match to the bowl, and began to smoke almost sadly, growling into the stem, puffing huge columns of smoke against the parapet of the trench, and giving vent to low, angry growls, as though he were a dog in a very bad temper. Then, of a sudden, he delivered himself of well-considered opinions. "Whoi ain't we a-doin' nuffink?" he asked in the most excellent cockney. "Whoi nah, if Oi was the G.O.C.--and Oi tells yer there's more things than that what's more unlikely--if Oi was the G.O.C. Oi'd just be up and doin'. See 'ere, Bill, Oi 'aint got nuffink up against 'im--that's the G.O.C.--for every chap along of us knows that 'e's a good 'un, but you just moind me, if that there G.O.C. was along 'ere in the trenches, a-swelterin' and a-sweatin', whoi, 'e'd know what it was, and 'e'd be for gettin' along with the business. 'E ain't afraid, not 'arf! But well, what's 'e after?" His comrade coughed, a satirical, nasty, impatient sort of cough, and again dashed the sweat from his forehead. "That's just what I was askin' you," he said, contempt in his voice, deep displeasure, disgust if you will, for indeed these two gallant fellows were eager to be up and doing, while inertia told upon their nerves and their tempers. "That's the very question. What is he doin' this 'ere G.O.C., a-keepin' us sweltering away in these 'ere trenches. Now you've wondered what you'd do if you was 'im. I'll tell yer what I'd do if I wore 'is shoes, and 'ad control of the troops what's with us. I'd----"