The whole air trembled with the roar of firing, but perhaps the most trying thing to the nerves was the sudden transition from brilliant glare to black darkness in the momentary intervals between the extinguishing of one star-shell and the bursting of the next. For an instant they would see the line of their trench standing out as clear as at noonday, with the glint of bayonets above the sandbags, and then it would be blotted out, to be lit up again the next moment. When they had crawled to within fifty yards of it, Harry Hawke thrust two fingers into his gash of a mouth and let loose a piercing whistle. "Now, Tiddler, pipe up!" he shouted, and their two voices rose in a discordant rendering of a popular trench song, their rifles waving wildly the while. At any other time Dennis would have been constrained to laugh at the incongruity of their choice, but Harry Hawke knew what he was doing, and that no German could have imitated the Cockney twang in which they brayed their chant at the top of their strident voices. "There's a silver linin'--froo the dyark clard shinin', Turn the dyark clard inside art till the boys come 'ome!" they howled, and as a fresh star-shell lit up the trench they saw a man in khaki thrust his head and shoulders over the topmost bag and look under his hand in their direction. "Cut it out, 'Arry--there's Ginger Bill, and 'e's 'eard!" cried Tiddler, jumping to his feet. "Run for all you're worth, sir!" His companions needed no second bidding, and in another minute they were clambering up the outer face of the parapet and falling in a heap on to the fire step inside. "Well, I'm blowed!" said Ginger Bill, as they picked themselves up. "And you ain't the only one," panted Harry Hawke. "Where's the other chaps?" And then he saw that Ginger Bill was bleeding badly. "Ordered over there at the double--ain't none of you got any ears?" said Ginger Bill, pointing to the hand-to-hand scrimmage which seemed to end in front of the Dashwoods' dug-out. Harry Hawke, very excusably overstepping the deference due to commissioned rank, clutched the skirt of Dennis's tunic and nearly pulled him backwards. "We four ain't no good, sir, in that scrum, but there's a shell-proof bomb store not a minute's run down this 'ere traverse. We could give 'em socks then!" "Bravo, Hawke!" shouted Dennis. "Come on, Dan; he's right!" And they tore along the traverse like men possessed. Back they came, Hawke and Tiddler girdled with a belt of racket bombs, Dennis and Dan Dunn each laden with two bags of that deadly variety so handy to the arm of the bowler. Ginger Bill gave them a cheer as they went past him, but they heard nothing and saw nothing but that solid mass of grey German uniforms, wedged like herrings in a barrel where they had no right to be--in a British trench!