"I say, do you hear that, Bob?" Dennis called out, as his brother came back, dodging from trunk to trunk, as every now and then one of the German guns on the ridge raked the wood with a stream of bullets. "The corporal says our Lewis is over yonder. What about my going over with a couple of chaps to give them a hand? I believe we could do something." "Right you are," said Bob. "I've just been talking to that Highland officer, and he agrees with me that we must lie doggo until we are reinforced. I have sent two men back to the C.O. Bunk off and see what you can do." "Thanks, old man," said Dennis, his face beaming with delight. "Hawke and Tiddler, this way!" And at his call the two inseparables crept back to where he stood. "We're through now, sir, if you'd like to give them a shout at the other end," said the corporal of the engineers. "Oh, good business!" cried Captain Bob. "If I can get on to the Governor that will buck things up a bit." And, leaving him kneeling behind a tall poplar, the telephone receiver in his hand, Dennis and his companions ran back a few yards into the shelter of the trees, and struck away at right angles. CHAPTER XVIII With the Lewis Gun--and After! In the old Elizabethan days, before scene-painting was invented, they used to hang a placard on a black cloth behind the actors with such inscriptions as "This is the seashore," "This is a wood." And such a description would have well passed for the spot through which they now threaded their way. It _had_ been a wood--a wood of tall, straight trees in full summer leaf, with bramble bushes and pleasant undergrowth before the British batteries had flung their devastating hail into it; but now it resembled an old toothbrush more than anything else, with bristles long and short, and sticking out at every angle. Hundreds of fallen saplings barred their way. Here and there a beech had been uprooted, and a great shell crater yawned where it had stood, and the scarred trunks and bare poles were stained orange and yellow and vivid metallic green by the explosive agents. A line of Tennyson occurred to Dennis, as odd things will occur at the oddest of moments. "'I hate the little hollow behind the dreadful wood,'" he murmured, as he made an enforced circuit round a larger crater than usual; and Hawke, who was just ahead of him, stopped short and shrank back with a shout of "Mind your eye, sir!" Something had crashed among the stumps in front of them, and a German 60-pound shell burst with a deafening roar. For an instant everything was obscured by a volume of dense black smoke, and a rain of splinters and broken branches fell about them as the smoke curled away. "That was a near thing," said Dennis. "Another minute, and there would have been three vacancies in the company." "I'm not sure there ain't some already, sir," said Hawke in a curious, hushed voice. "What's that yonder?"