"You might wait a minute, Sergeant," he said, "afore you reports no
casualties, just to give us time to look round and count if all our
limbs is left on. And I've serious doubts at this minute whether my eye
is in its right place or bulging out the back o' my head; anyway, it
feels as if an eight-inch Krupp had bumped fair into it."
When the explosion came, Toffee Everton had instinctively ducked and
crouched, but he noticed that Halliday never moved or gave a sign of
the nearness of any danger. Toffee remarked this to him.
"And I don't see," he confessed, "where that fits in with this
hand- and heart-shaking o' yours."
Halliday looked at him curiously.
"If that was the worst," he said, "I could stand it. It isn't. It isn't
the beginning of the least of the worst. If it had fell in the trench,
now, and mucked up half a dozen men, there'd have been something to
squeal about. That's the sort o' thing that breaks a man up--your own
mates that was talking to you a minute afore, ripped to bits and torn
to ribbons. I've seen nothing left of a whole live man but a pair o'
burnt boots. I've seen--" He stopped abruptly and shivered a little.
"I'm not going to talk about it," he said. "I think about it and see it
too often in my dreams as it is. And, besides," he went on, "I didn't
duck that time, because I've learnt enough to know it's too late to
duck when the shell bursts a dozen yards from you.
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