For nearly
ten minutes the two men listened, and talked in short sentences, and
listened again. The rattle of rifle fire was sustained and unbroken,
and punctuated liberally at short intervals by the boom of exploding
grenades and bombs. Decidedly the whole action was heavier--or coming
back closer to them.
The sergeant was moving across the door to open it and listen when a
shell struck the house above them. The building shook violently, down
to the very flags of the stone floor; from overhead, after the first
crash, there came a rumble of falling masonry, the splintering cracks
of breaking wood-work, the clatter and rattle of cascading bricks and
tiles. A shower of plaster grit fell from the cellar roof and settled
thick upon the papers littered over the table. The sergeant halted
abruptly with his hand on the cellar door, three or four of the
sleepers stirred restlessly, one woke for a minute sufficiently to
grumble curses and ask "what the blank was that"; the rest slept on
serene and undisturbed. The sergeant stood there until the last sounds
of falling rubbish had ceased. "A shell," he said, and drew a deep
breath. "Plunk into upstairs somewhere."
The signaler made no answer. He was quite busy at the moment
rearranging his disturbed papers and blowing the dust and grit off
them.
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