up and out and away by the
communication trench. They squeezed aside in silence when the
Subaltern pushed in to inspect the working, and waited with side winks
to one another to see what he would do to overcome the water
difficulty. 'Pumps' would of course have been the simple answer, but
the men knew as well as the Subaltern knew that pumps were not to be
had at that particular time and place for love or money, and that all
the filling of all the 'indents' in the R.E. would not produce one
single efficient pump from store.

The Subaltern did not trouble with indent forms or stores. He had had
something of a fight to get a grudging permission for his mine, and he
felt it in his bones that if he worried the big chiefs too much with
requisitions he would be told to abandon the mine. He shut his teeth
tight at the thought. It was his mine and he was going to see it
through, if he had to bale the water out with a tea-cup.

He made a quick cast through the shell-wrecked village, drew blank, sat
for fifteen minutes on the curb of a rubble-choked well and thought
hard, jumped up and called the Corporal to provide him with four men
and some odd tools, and struck back across muddy and shell-cratered
fields to the nearest farm. The farmer, who had remained in possession
despite the daily proximity of bursting shells, a shrapnel-smashed tile
roof, and a gaping hole where one house-corner should have been, made
some objection to the commandeering of his old-fashioned farm pump. He
was at first supported in this by the officer in charge of the men
billeted in the barn and sheds, but the Sapper explained the urgency of
his need and cunningly clinched the argument by reminding the Infantry
officer that probably he and his men would soon be installed in the
trenches from which the mine ran, and that he--the Sapper--although he
was not supposed to mention it, might just hint that his mine was only
hurrying to forestall an enemy mine which was judged to be approaching
the trench the Infantry officer would presently occupy. This last was
a sheer invention of the moment, but it served excellently, and the
Sapper and his party bore off their pump in triumph. It was later
erected in the mine shaft, and the difficulty of providing sufficient
piping to run from the pump to the waterlogged part of the mine was met
by a midnight visit to the house where Headquarters abode and the
wholesale removal of gutters and rain-pipes. As Headqua