As it reached the highest point of its curve and began
to fall down towards the trench, it was as a rule fairly easy to say
whether it would fall to right or left of the traverse. If it fell in
the trench to the right, the men hurriedly plunged round the corner of
the traverse to the left, and waited there till the bomb exploded. The
crushing together at the angle of the traverse, the confused cries of
warning or advice, or speculation as to which side a bomb would fall,
the scuffling, tumbling rush to one side or the other, the cries of
derision which greeted the ineffective explosion--all made up a sort of
game. The Towers had had a good many unhappy experiences with bombs,
and at first played the unknown game carefully and anxiously, and with
some doubts as to its results. But they soon picked it up, and
presently made quite merry at it, laughing and shouting noisily,
tumbling and picking themselves up and laughing again like children.
They lost three men, who were wounded through their slowness in
escaping from the compartment where the bomb exploded, and this rather
put the Towers on their mettle. As Private Robinson remarked, it wasn't
the cheese that a Frenchman should beat an Englishman at any blooming
game.
"If we could only get a little bit of a stake on it," he said
wistfully, "we could take 'em on, the winners being them that loses
least men.
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