A soughing wind, a shrieking of sea-birds, audible in pauses between the faraway crackle of rifle-fire and the deep reverberations of artillery--familiar music to ears trained by long listening. A shrill scream of flying shrapnel, a distant crash and then a tense hush.... Silence--nearly, but not quite. A sound so small as to be almost lost in the echoes of the clamor, an impact upon the air like the tapping of the wings of an insect against one’s ear-drum, a persistent staccato note which no other noise could still, borne with curious distinctness upon some aërial current of the fog bank. And yet this tiny sound had a strange effect upon the desolate scene, for in a moment, as if they had been sown with dragon’s teeth, the sand dunes suddenly vomited forth armed men who ran hither and thither, their hands to their ears, peering aloft as though trying to pierce the mystery of the skies. “The blighter! It’s ’_im_ agayn.” “_’Im! ’Oo’s ’im_, I’d like to arsk?” “Stow yer jaw, cawn’t yer _’ear_? Ole Yaller-belly, agayn.” The sounds were now clearly audible and to the south a series of rapid detonations shivered the air. “There goes ‘Johnny look in the air.’ Cawn’t get ’im, though. ’Strewth! ’E’s a cool one--_’e_ is!” A hoarse order rang out from the trenches behind them--and the men ran for cover. The fog lifted a little and a shaft of light touched the leaden gray of the sea like the sheen on a dirty gun-barrel. The nearer high-angle guns were speaking now--fruitlessly, for the sounds seemed to come from directly overhead. The fog lifted again and a shaft of pale sunlight shot across the line of entrenchments. “There ’e is, not wastin’ no time--_’e_ ayn’t.” “Yus. But they’re arfter ’im. There comes hyviashun. O _’ell_!” The expletive in a final tone of disgust for the fog had fallen again, completely obliterating the air-craft and its pursuers. “_’Oo’s_ Yaller-belly?” asked a smooth-faced youth who still wore the sallow of London under his coat of windburn. “You’re one of the new lot, ayn’t yer? You’ll know b----y soon ’oo Yaller-belly is, won’t ’e, Bill? Pow! That’s ’im--them sharp ones.” “Garn!” said the one called Bill. “’E never ’its anythink but the dirt an’ ’e cawn’t ’elp that.” “’Tayn’t ’cos ’e don’t try. ’Ear ’em? Nice droppin’s fer a dove, ayn’t they?” “Dove?” said the newcomer. “Yus. Tubs the swine calls ’em----” “Tawb, yer blighter.” “Tub, I says. Whenever troops is moving’, ’e’s always abaht--jus’ drops dahn hinformal-like, out o’ nowhere----” “And cawn’t they catch ’im?” “Catch ’im--? Bly me--not they! A thousand ’orse-power, they say ’e ’as--flies circles round hour hair squad like they was a lot o’ bloomink captivatin’ balloons.” “But the ’igh-hangles----?” “Moves too fast--’ere an’ gone agayn, afore you can fill yer cutty. They do say ’as ’ow when Yaller-belly comes, there’s sure to be big doin’s along the front.” “Aye,” said Bill. “When we was dahn at Copenhagen----” “Compayn, gran’pop----”