in amazement to the noise outside.

"Rouse yourselves," he cried. "Get a move on. The Germans are almost on
top of us. The front line's falling back. They'll stand here." He
seized one or two of them and pushed them towards the door. "You," he
said, "and you and you, get outside and round the back there. See if
you can get a pickaxe, a trenching tool, anything, and break down that
grating and knock a bigger hole in the window. We may have to crawl out
there presently. The rest o' ye come with me an' help block up the
door."

Through the din that followed, the telephonist fought to get his
message through; he had to give up an attempt to speak it while a
hatchet, a crowbar, and a pickaxe were noisily at work breaking out a
fresh exit from the back of the cellar, and even after that work had
been completed, it was difficult to make himself heard. He completed
the urgent message for reenforcements at last, listened to some
confused and confusing comments upon it, and then made ready to take
some messages from the other end.

"You'll have to shout," he said, "no, shout--speak loud, because I
can't 'ardly 'ear myself think--no, 'ear myself think. Oh, all sorts,
but the shelling is the worst, and one o' them beastly airyale
torpedoes. All right, go ahead."

The earpiece receiver strapped tightly over one ear, left his right
hand free to use a pencil, and as he took the spoken message word by
word, he wrote it on the pad of message forms under his hand. Under the
circumstances it is hardly surprising that the message took a good deal
longer than a normal time to send through, and while he was taking it,
the signaler's mind was altogether too occupied to pay any attention to
the progress of events above and around him. But now the sergeant came
back and warned him that he had better get his things ready and put
together as far as he could, in case they had to make a quick and
sudden move.

"The game's up, I'm afraid," he said gloomily, and took a note that was
brought down by another orderly. "I thought so," he commented, as he
read it hastily and passed it to the other signaler. "It's a message
warning the right and left flanks that we can't hold the center any
longer, and that they are to commence falling back to conform to our
retirement at 3.20 _ac emma_, which is ten minutes from now."

Over their heads the signalers could hear tramping scurrying feet, the
hammering out of loopholes, the dragging thump and flinging