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4. Researchers used the following item to measure registered nurses’ (RNs) income in a study:
What category identifies your current income as an RN?
a. Less than $50,000
b. $50,000 to 59,999
c. $60,000 to 69,999
d. $70,000 to 80,000
e. $80,000 or greater

What level of measurement is this income variable? Does the income variable follow the
rules outlined in Figure 1-1? Provide a rationale for your answer.
Answer: In this example, the income variable is measured at the ordinal level. The income catego-
ries are exhaustive, ranging from less than $50,000 to greater than $80,000. The two open-ended

Copyright © 2020, Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. AG 1-1

AG 1-2 Answer Guidelines for Questions to Be Graded

categories ensure that all salary levels are covered. The categories are not exclusive, since catego-
ries (d) and (e) include an $80,000 salary, so study participants making $80,000 might mark
either (d) or (e) or both categories, resulting in erroneous data. Category (e) could be changed
to greater than $80,000, making the categories exclusive. The categories can be rank ordered
from the lowest salary to the highest salary, which is consistent with ordinal data (Grove &
Gray, 2019; Waltz et al., 2017).

5. What level of measurement is the CDS score? Provide a rationale for your answer.
Answer: The CDS score is at the interval level of measurement. The CDS is a 26-item Likert
scale developed to measure depression in cardiac patients. Study participants rated their symp-
toms on a scale of 1 to 7, with higher numbers indicating increased severity in the depression
symptoms. The total scores for each subject obtained from this multi-item scale are considered
to be at the interval level of measurement (Gray et al., 2017; Waltz et al., 2017).

6. Were nonparametric or parametric analysis techniques used to analyze the CDS scores for
the cardiac patients in this study? Provide a rationale for your answer.
Answer: Parametric statistics, such as mean and SD, were conducted to describe CDS scores
for study participants (see Table 1). CDS scores are interval-level data as indicated in Questions 5,
so parametric statistics are appropriate for this level of data (Gray et al., 2017; Kim & Mallory,
2017).

7. Is the prevalence of depression linked to the NYHA class? Discuss the clinical importance
of this result.
Answer: The study narrative indicated that the prevalence of depression increased with the
greater NYHA class. In NYHA class III, 64% of the subjects were depressed, whereas 11% of the
subjects were depressed in NYHA class I. Thus, as the NYHA class increased, the number of sub-
jects with depression increased. This is an expected finding because as the NYHA class increases,
cardiac patients have more severe physical symptoms, which usually result in emotional distress,
such as depression. Nurses need to actively assess cardiac patients for depression, especially those
in higher NYHA classes, so they might be diagnosed and treated as needed.

8. What frequency and percent of cardiac patients in this study were not being treated with
an antidepressant? Show your calculations and round your answer to the nearest whole
percent (%).
Answer: A total of 106 cardiac patients participated in this study. The sample included
15 patients who were receiving an antidepressant (see Table 1). The number of cardiac
patients not treated for depression was 91 (106 – 15 91). The group percent is calculated
by the following formula: (group frequency total sample size) 100%. For this study,
(91 patients 106 sample size) 100% 0.858 100% 85.8% 86%. The final
answer is rounded to the nearest whole percent as directed in the question. You could have
also subtracted the 14% of patients treated with antidepressants from 100% and obtained the
86% who were not treated with an antidepressant.

9. What was the purpose of the 6-minute walk test (6MWT)? Would the 6MWT be useful in
clinical practice?
Answer: Ha et al. (2018) stated, “The 6-min walk test (6MWT) is a measure of the submaximal,
steady-state functional capacity” of cardiac patients. This test would be a quick, easy way to
determine a cardiac patient’s functional status in a clinical setting. This functional status
score could be used to determine the treatment plan to promote or maintain functional status
of cardiac patients.

Copyright © 2020, Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

 Answer Guidelines for Questions to Be Graded AG 1-3

10. How was exercise confidence measured in this study? What was the level of measurement
for the exercise confidence variable in this study? Provide a rationale for your answer.
Answer: Exercise confidence of the patients with heart failure (HF) in this study was measured
with the Exercise Confidence Scale that included four subscales focused on walking, climbing,
lifting objects of graded weight, and running (see the study narrative). This was a rating scale
with values ranging from 0 to 100. The patients’ scores for the Total Exercise Confidence scale
and the subscales were considered interval-level data and analyzed with parametric statistics,
such as means and SDs (see the study narrative; Waltz et al., 2017).

Copyright © 2020, Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Title: Jim and Wally

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JIM AND WALLY

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 “ ‘Hold tight to the rail,’ Jim’s voice said in Nora’s ear.” (Page 67.)

Jim and Wally] [Frontispiece

 JIM AND WALLY

By

MARY GRANT BRUCE

Author of “Mates at Billabong,” “Norah of Billabong,” etc.

W A R D , L O C K & C O ., L I M I T E D
LONDON, MELBOURNE AND TORONTO
1917

To
G. E. B.,

Cork, 1915-16
 CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I War............................................................. 9
II Yellow
.............................................................
Envelopes 30
III When
.............................................................
the Boys come Home 43
IV To .............................................................
Ireland 53
V Into
.............................................................
Donegal 74
VI Of .............................................................
Little Brown Trout 98
VII Lough
.............................................................
Anoor 113
VIII John
.............................................................
O’Neill 131
IX Pins.............................................................
and Pork 147
X The.............................................................
Rock of Doon 161
XI Northward
............................................................. 183
XII Ass.............................................................
-Cart versus Motor 197
XIII The.............................................................
Cave among the Rocks 213
XIV A F.............................................................
amily Matter 229
XV Plans
.............................................................
of Campaign 242
XVI The.............................................................
Fight in the Dawn 248
 CHAPTER I
WAR
“For one the laurel, one the rose, and glory for them all,
All the gallant gentlemen who fight and laugh and fall.”
Margery Ruth Betts.

T HE trench wound a sinuous way through the sodden Flanders

mud. Underfoot were boards; and then sandbags; and then
more boards, added as the mud rose up and swallowed all that was
put down upon it. Some of the last-added boards had almost
disappeared, ground out of sight by the trampling feet of hundreds
of men: a new battalion had relieved, three nights before, the men
who had held that part of the line for a week, and when a relief
arrives, a trench becomes uncomfortably filled, and the ground
underfoot is churned into deep glue. It was more than time to put
down another floor; to which the only objection was that no more
flooring material was available, and had there been, no one had time
to fetch it.
It was the second trench. Beyond it was another, occupied by
British soldiers: beyond that again, a mass of tangled barbed-wire,
and then the strip of No-Man’s Land dividing the two armies—a strip
ploughed up by shells and scarred with craters formed by the
bursting of high explosives. Here and there lay rifles, and spiked
German helmets, and khaki caps; but no living thing was visible save
the cheeky Flemish sparrows that hopped about the quiet space,
chirping and twittering as if trying to convince themselves and
everybody else that War was hundreds of miles away. The sparrows
carried out this pleasant deception every morning, abandoning the
attempt as soon as the first German gun began what the British
soldiers, disagreeably interrupted in frying bacon, termed “the
breakfast hate.” Then they retreated precipitately to the sparrow
equivalent to a dug-out, to meditate in justifiable annoyance on the
curious ways of men.
In the second trench the men were weary and heavy-eyed, and
even bacon had scant attractions for them. It was their first
experience of trench-life complicated by shell-fire, and since their
arrival the enemy had been “hating” with a vigour that seemed to
argue on his part a peculiar sourness of temper. Now, after two days
of incessant artillery din and three nights of the strenuous toil that
falls upon the trenches with darkness, the new men bore evidence of
exhaustion. Casualties had been few, considering the violent nature
of the bombardment; but to those who had never before seen Death
come suddenly, an even slighter loss would have been horrifying.
The ceaseless nerve-shattering roar of the big guns pounded in their
brains long after darkness had put an end to the bombardment;
their brief snatches of sleep were haunted by the white faces of the
comrades with whom they would laugh and fight and work no more.
They were stiff and sore with crouching under the parapets and in
the narrow dug-outs; dazed with noise, sullen with the anger of men
who have been forced to endure without making any effort to hit
back. But their faces had hardened under the test. A few were
shrinking, “jumpy,” useless: but the majority had stiffened into men.
When the time for hitting back came, they would be ready.
Dawn on the fourth morning found them weary enough, but, on
the whole, in better condition than they had been two days earlier.
They were getting used to it; and even to artillery bombardment
“custom hath made a property of easiness.” The first sense of
imminent personal danger had faded with each hour that found
most of them still alive. Discipline and routine, making each officer
and man merely part of one great machine, steadied them into
familiar ways, even in that unfamiliar setting. And above all was
satisfaction that after months of slow training on barrack-square and
peaceful English fields they were at last in the middle of the real
thing—doing their bit. It had been conveyed to them that they were
considered to be shaping none too badly: a curt testimonial, which,
passing down the line, had lent energy to a hard night of rebuilding
parapets, mending barbed-wire, and cleaning up battered sections of
trench. They were almost too tired to eat. But the morning—so far—
was peaceful; the sunlight was cheery, the clean breeze refreshing.
Possibly to-day might find the Hun grown weary of hating so noisily.
There were worse things than even a trench in Flanders on a bright
April morning.
Jim Linton sat on a small box outside his dug-out, drinking
enormous quantities of tea, and making a less enthusiastic attempt
to demolish the contents of an imperfectly heated tin of bully beef.
He was bare-headed, owing to the fact that a portion of shrapnel
had removed his cap the day before, luckily without damaging the
head inside it. Mud plastered him from neck to heels. He was a huge
boy, well over six feet, broad-shouldered and powerful; and the
bronze which the sun of his native Australia had put into his face had
been proof against the trench experiences that had whitened English
cheeks, less deeply tanned.
Another second lieutenant came hastily round a traverse and
tripped over his feet.
“There’s an awful lot of you in a trench!” said the new-comer,
recovering himself.
“Sorry,” said Jim. “I can’t find any other place to put them; they
will stick out. Never mind, the mud will bury them soon; it swallows
them if I forget to move them every two minutes. Come and have
breakfast.”
“I want oceans of tea,” said Wally Meadows, dragging a biscuit-
tin from the dug-out, perching it precariously on a small board island
in the mud, and seating himself with caution. He glanced with
disfavour at the beef-tin. “Is that good?”
“Beastly,” Jim answered laconically. “Smith’s strong point is not
cookery. It’s faintly warm and exceedingly tough; and something
with moisture in it seems to have happened to the biscuits. But the
tea is topping. I told Smith to bring another supply presently.
Bacon’s a bit short, so I said we preferred bully.”
Wally accepted a tin mug of milkless tea with gratitude.
“That’s great,” he said, after a beatific pause, putting down the
empty mug. He pushed his cap back from his tired young face, and
heaved a great sigh of relief. “Blessings on whoever discovered tea! I
don’t think I’ll have any beef, thanks.”
“Yes, you will,” Jim said, firmly. “I know it’s beastly, and one isn’t
hungry, but it’s a fool game not to eat. If we have any luck there
may be some work to-day; and you can’t fight if you don’t eat
something. The first mouthful is the worst.”
His chum took the beef-tin meekly.
“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “If we only do get a chance of
fighting, I should think we’d have enormous appetites afterwards;
but one can’t get hungry hiding in this beastly hole and letting
Brother Boche sling his tin cans at us. Wouldn’t you give something
for a bath and twelve hours’ sleep?”
“By Jove, yes!” Jim agreed. “But I don’t mind postponing them if
only we get a smack at those gentry across the way first. Did you
see Anstruther?”
“Yes—he’s better. He dodged the R.A.M.C. men—said he wasn’t
going to be carted back because of a knock on the head. He’s tied
up freshly and looks awfully interesting, but he declares he’s quite
fit.”
Captain Anstruther was the company commander, a veteran of
one-and-twenty, with eight months’ service. The two Australian
boys, nineteen and eighteen respectively, and fully conscious of their
own limitations, regarded him with great respect in his official
capacity, and, off duty, had clearly demonstrated their ability to
dispose of him, with the gloves on, within three rounds. They were
exceedingly good friends. Anstruther could tell stories of the Marne,
of the retreat from Mons, of the amazing tangle of the first weeks of
war, which had left him, then a second lieutenant, in sole command
of the remnant of his battalion. To the two Australians he was a
mine of splendid information. They were mildly puzzled at what he
demanded in return—bush “yarns” of their own country, stories of
cattle musterings, of aboriginals, of sheep-shearing by machinery, of
bush-fire fighting; even of football as played at their school in
Melbourne. To them these things, interesting enough in peacetime
and in their own setting, were commonplace and stale in the
trenches, with Europe ablaze with battle all round them. Anstruther,
however, looked on war with an eye that saw little of romance:
willing to see it through, but with no illusions as to its attractions. He
greatly preferred to talk of bush-fires, which he had not seen.
Yesterday a shell which had wrecked far too much of a section of
trench to be at all comfortable had provided this disillusioned warrior
with a means of escape, had he so wished, by knocking him
senseless, with a severe scalp-wound. Counselled to seek the
dressing-station at the rear, when he had recovered his senses,
however, he had flatly declined; all his boredom lost in annoyance at
his aching head, and a wild desire to obtain enemy scalps in
vengeance. Jim and Wally had administered first-aid with field
dressings, and the wounded one, declaring himself immediately
cured, had hidden himself and his bandages from any intrusive
senior who might be hard-hearted enough to insist on his
retirement.
“It was a near thing,” Jim said reflectively.
“So was yours,” stated his chum.
“Oh—my old cap?—a miss is as good as a mile,” said Jim. “I’m
glad it wasn’t a bit nearer, though; it would be a bore to be put out
of business without ever having seen a German, let alone finding out
which of us could ‘get his fist in fust.’ ” He rose, feeling for his pipe.
“Have you eaten your whack of that stuff?”
“I’ve done my best,” said Wally, displaying the tin, nearly empty.
“Can’t manage any more. Let’s have a walk along the trench and see
what’s happening.”
“Well, keep your silly head down,” Jim said. “The parapet is
getting more and more uneven, and you never remember you’re six
feet.”
Wally grinned. Each of the friends suffered under the belief that
he was extremely careful and the other destined to sudden death
from unwittingly exposing himself to a German sniper.
“If you followed your own advice, grandmother,” he said; “you
being three inches taller, and six times more careless! I always told
your father and Norah that you’d be an awful responsibility.”
“I’ll put you under arrest if you’re not civil,” Jim threatened.
“Small boys aren’t allowed to be impertinent on active service!”
 They floundered along in the mud, ducking whenever the parapet
was low: sandbags had run short, and trench-repairing on the
previous night had been like making bricks without straw. The men
were finishing breakfast, keeping close to the dug-outs, since at any
moment the first German shell might scream overhead. The line was
very thin; reinforcements, badly enough wanted, were reported to
be coming up. Meanwhile the battalion could only hope that the
shells would continue to spare them, and that when the enemy
came the numbers would be sufficiently even to enable them to put
up a good fight.
Captain Anstruther, white-faced under a bandage that showed
red stains, nodded to them cheerily.
“Ripping morning, isn’t it?” he said. “Hope you’ve had a pleasant
night, Linton!”
Jim grinned, glancing at his hands, which displayed numerous
long red scars.
“One’s nights here are first-class training for the career of a
burglar later on,” he said. “Mending barbed-wire in the dark is full of
unexpected happenings, chiefly unpleasant. I don’t mind the actual
mending so much as having to lie flat on one’s face in the mud when
a star-shell comes along.”
“Very disorganizing to work,” said another subaltern, Blake,
whose mud-plastered uniform showed that he had had his share of
lying flat. In private life Blake had belonged to the species “nut,” and
had been wont to parade in Bond Street in beautiful raiment. Here,
dirty, unshaven and scarcely distinguishable from the muddiest of his
platoon, he permitted himself a cheerfulness that Bond Street had
never seen.
“Sit down,” Anstruther said. “There are more or less dry
sandbags, and business is slack. Why didn’t you fellows come down
to mess? Have you had any breakfast?”
“Yes, thanks,” Jim answered. “We fed up there—our men were
inclined to give breakfast a miss, so we encouraged them to eat by
feeding largely, among them. Nothing like exciting a feeling of
competition.”
 “Trenches under fire don’t breed good healthy appetites—at any
rate until you’re used to them,” Blake remarked.
“The men are bucking up well, all the same,” said Anstruther.
“I’m jolly proud of them; it’s a tough breaking-in for fellows who
aren’t much more than recruits. They’re steadying down better than
I could have hoped they would.”
“Doesn’t the weary old barrack-square grind stand to them now!”
said Jim. “They see it, too, themselves; only they’re very keen to put
all the bayonet-exercise into practice. Smith, my servant, was the
mildest little man you ever saw, at home; now he spends most of
the day putting a bloodthirsty edge on his bayonet, and I catch him
in corners prodding the air and looking an awful Berserk. They’re all
chirping up wonderfully this morning, bless ’em. I shouldn’t wonder
if by this time to-morrow they were regarding it all as a picnic!”
“So it is, if you look at it the right way,” said Blake. “Lots of jokes
about, too. Did you hear what one of our airmen gave the enemy on
April the First? He flew over a crowd behind their lines, and dropped
a football. It fell slowly, and Brother Boche took to cover like a
rabbit, from all directions. Then it struck the ground and bounced
wildly, finally settling to rest: I suppose they thought it was a delay-
action fuse, for they laid low for a long time before they dared
believe it was not going to explode. So they came out from their
shelters to examine it, and found written on it ‘April fool—Gott strafe
England!’ ”
His hearers gave way to mirth.
“Good man!” said Anstruther. “But there are lots of mad wags
among the flying people. I should think it must make ’em
extraordinarily cheerful always to be cutting about in nice clean air,
where there isn’t any barbed-wire or mud.”
Feeling grunts came from the others.
“Rather!” said Garrett, another veteran of eight months’ service.
“There was one poor chap who had engine-trouble when he was
doing a lone reconnaissance, and had to come down behind the
German lines. He worked furiously, and just got his machine in going
order, when two enemy officers trotted up, armed with revolvers,
and took him prisoner. Then they thought it would be a bright idea
to make him take them on a reconnaissance over the Allied lines;
which design they explained to him in broken English and with a fine
display of their portable artillery, making him understand that if he
didn’t obey he’d be shot forthwith.”
“But he didn’t!” Wally burst out.
“Just you wait, young Australia—you’re an awful fire-eater!” said
the narrator. “The airman thought it over, and came to the
conclusion that it would be a pity to waste his valuable life; so he
gave in meekly, climbed in, and took his passengers aboard. They
went off very gaily, and he gave them a first-rate view of all they
wanted to see; and, of course, carrying our colours, he could fly
much lower than any German machine could have gone in safety. It
was jam for the two Boches; I guess they felt their Iron Crosses
sprouting. Their joy only ended—and then it ended suddenly—when
he looped the loop!”
The audience jumped.
“What happened?”
“They very naturally fell out.”
“And the airman?” Wally asked, ecstatically.
“He had taken the precaution to strap himself in—unobtrusively.
Didn’t I tell you he appreciated his valuable life?” said Garrett,
laughing. “He came down neatly where he wanted to, made his
report, and sent out a party to give decent burial to two very dead
amateur aviators. The force of gravity is an excellent thing to back
you up in a tight place, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s something to get one’s chance—and it’s quite another
to know when to take advantage of it,” said Anstruther. “I expect an
airman has to learn to make up his mind quicker than most of us.
But there’s no doubt of the chances that come to some people. A
Staff officer was here early this morning, and he was telling me of
young Goujon.”
“Who’s he?” queried Blake, lazily.
“He’s a French kid—just seventeen. He was one of a small party
sent out to locate some enemy machine-guns that were giving a
good deal of trouble. They found ’em, all right; but when they were
wriggling their way back a shell came along and wiped out the entire
crowd—all except this Goujon kid. He was untouched, and he hid for
hours in the crater made by the explosion of the shell. When it got
dark he crept out: but by that time he was pretty mad, and instead
of getting home, he wanted to get a bit of his own back, and what
must he do but crawl to those machine-guns and lob bombs on
them!”
“That’s some kid,” said Blake briefly.
“Yes, he was, rather. He destroyed two of the three guns, and
then was overpowered—that wouldn’t have taken long!—and made
prisoner: pretty roughly handled, too. But before he could be sent to
the rear, some of our chaps made a little night-attack on that bit of
German trench, and in the excitement Goujon got away. So he
trotted home—but on the way he stopped, and gathered up the
remaining machine-gun. Staggered into his own lines with it.
They’ve given him the Military Medal.”
“Deserved it, too,” was the comment.
“And he’s seventeen!” said some one. “He ought to get pretty
high up before the war is over.”
“I know a man who’s a major at nineteen,” Anstruther said,
“Went out as a second lieutenant and was promoted for gallantry at
Mons; got his captaincy and was wounded at the Aisne; recovered,
and at Neuve Chapelle was the sole officer left, except two very
junior subalterns, in all his battalion. He handled it in action, brought
them out brilliantly—awful corner it was, too,—and was in command
for a fortnight after, before they could find a senior man; there
weren’t any to spare. He was gazetted major last week.”
“Lucky dog!” said Blake.
“Well, I suppose he is. They say he’s a genius at soldiering,
anyhow; and, of course, he got his chance. There must be hundreds
of men who would do as well if they ever got it; only opportunity
doesn’t come their way.”
“They say this will be a war for young men,” Garrett said. “We’re
going back to old days; I believe Wellington and Napoleon were
colonels at twenty. And that’s more than you will be, young
Meadows, if you don’t mend your ways.”
“I never expected to be,” said Wally, thus attacked.
 “But why won’t I, anyhow, apart from obvious reasons?”
“Because you’ll be a neat little corpse,” said Garrett. “What’s this
game of yours I hear about?—crawling round on No-Man’s Land at
night, and collecting little souvenirs? The souvenir you’ll certainly
collect will come from a machine-gun.”
Wally blushed.
“Well, there are such a jolly lot of things there,” he defended
himself. “Boche helmets—I’ve got three beauties—and belts, and
buckles, and things. People at home like ’em.”
“Presumably people at home like you,” Anstruther said. “But they
certainly won’t have you to like if you do it, and it’s possible their
affection might even wane for a German helmet that had cost you
your scalp. Verboten, Meadows; that’s good German, at any rate.
Understand?”
Wally assented meekly. Jim Linton, apparently sublimely
unconscious of the conversation, sighed with relief. His chum’s
adventurous expeditions had caused him no little anxiety, especially
as they were undertaken at a time when his own duties prevented
his keeping an eye on the younger boy—which would probably have
ended in his accompanying him. From childhood, Jim and Wally had
been accustomed to do things in pairs: a habit which had persisted
even to sending them together from Australia to join the Army, since
Wally was too young for the Australian forces. England was willing to
take boys of seventeen; therefore it was manifestly out of the
question that Jim should join anywhere but in England, despite his
nineteen years. And as Jim’s father and sister were also willing to
come to England, the matter had arranged itself as a family affair.
Wally Meadows was an orphan, and the Linton family had long
included him on a permanent, if informal, basis.
“It’s jolly to get V.C.’s and medals and other ironmongery,”
Anstruther was saying; “but I’d like to be the chap who organized
the Toy Band on the retreat from Mons. He was a Staff officer, and
he found the remains of a regiment, several hundred strong,
straggling through a village, just dead beat. The Germans were close
on their heels; the British had no officers left, and had quite given
up. The Staff chap called on them to make another effort to save
themselves, but they wouldn’t—they had been on the run for days,
were half-starved, worn out: they didn’t care what happened to
them. The officer was at his wits’ end what to do, when his eye fell
on a little bit of a shop—you know the usual French village store,
with all sorts of stuff in the window: and there he saw some toy
drums and penny whistles. He darted in and bought some: came out
and induced two or three of the less exhausted men to play them—
it’s said he piped on one penny whistle himself, only he won’t admit
it now. But you know what the tap of a drum will do on a route-
march when the men are getting tired. He roused the whole
regiment with his fourpence-worth of band and brought them back
to their brigade next day—never lost a man!”
“Jolly good work,” said Blake.
“He won’t get anything for it, of course,” said Anstruther. “You
don’t get medals for playing tin whistles; and anyhow, there was no
one to report it. But—yes, I’d like to have been that chap.” He rose
and stretched himself, taking advantage of a section of undamaged
parapet. “Brother Boche is rather late in beginning his hate this
morning, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps he’s given up hating as a bad job,” Wally suggested.
“We’ll miss the dear old thing if he really means to leave us
alone,” said Anstruther. “Just as well if he does, though: our line is
painfully thin, and it’s evident to anyone that our guns are short of
ammunition: we’re giving them about one shell to twenty of theirs.
And don’t they know it! They send us enormous doses of high-
explosive shells, and in return we tickle them feebly with a little
shrapnel. They must chuckle!”
“I suppose England will wake up and make munitions for us
when we’re all wiped out,” said Garrett, scornfully. “They’re awfully
cheery over there: theatres and restaurants packed, business as
usual, bull-dog grit, and all the rest of it: Parliament yapping happily,
and strikes twice a week. And our chaps trying to fight for ’em, and
dying for want of ammunition to do it with. I suppose they think
we’re rather lazy not to make it in our spare time!”
“I’m afraid they won’t appoint me dictator just yet,” Blake
remarked. “If they would, I’d have every striker and slacker out
here: not to fight, but to mend barbed-wire, clean up trenches, and
do the general dirty work. First-rate tonic for a disgruntled mind.
And I’d send what was left of them to the end of the world
afterwards. Will you have them in Australia, Linton?”
“Thanks; we’ve plenty of troubles of our own,” Jim returned
hastily. “Don’t you think we were dumping-ground for your rubbish
for long enough?”
“You were a large, empty place, and you had to be peopled,” said
Blake, grinning. “And a good many of them were very decent people,
I believe.”
“Well, they might well be,” Jim responded—“you sent them out
for stealing a sheep or a shirt or a medicine-bottle: one poor kid of
six was sent out for life for stealing jam-tarts. Many excellent men
must have begun life by stealing jam-tarts: I did, myself!”
“If you’re a sample of the after-effects, I don’t wonder we
exported the other criminals early,” laughed Blake.
“Well, if any of their descendants grew into the chaps that landed
at Gallipoli the other day, they were no bad asset,” said Anstruther.
“By Jove, those fellows must be fighters, Linton! I wouldn’t care to
have the job of holding them back.”
“I knew they’d fight,” said Jim briefly. Down in his quiet soul he
was torn between utter pride in his countrymen, and woe that he
had not been with them in that stern Gallipoli landing: the latter
emotion firmly repressed. It had been the fight of his boyish dreams
—wild charging, hand to hand work, a fleeing enemy: not like this
hole-and-corner trench existence unseen by the unseen foe, with
Death that could not be combated dropping from the sky. His old
school-fellows had been at Gallipoli, and had “made good.” He ached
to have been with them.
An orderly came up hurriedly. Anstruther tore open the note he
carried.
“There’s word of an enemy attack,” he said crisply. “Get to your
places—quick!”
The subalterns scattered along the trench, each to his platoon.
They had already inspected the men, making sure that no detail of
armament had been forgotten, and that rifles were all in order.
Garrett, who commanded the machine-gun section, fled joyfully to
the emplacement, his face like a happy child’s. The alarm ran swiftly
up and down the trench: low, sharp words of command brought
every man to his place, while the sentries, like statues, were glued
to their peep-holes. Jim and Wally fingered their revolvers, scarcely
able to realize that the time for using them had come at last. Field
officers appeared, hurriedly scanning every detail of preparation, and
giving a word of advice here and there.
“Thank ’eving, we’re going to have a look-in!” muttered a man in
front of Jim: a grizzled sergeant with the two South African ribbons
on his breast. “Steady there, young ’Awkins; don’t go meddlin’ with
that trigger of yours. You’ll get a chanst of loosin’ off pretty soon.”
“Cawn’t come too soon for me!” said Hawkins, in a throaty
whisper, fondling his rifle lovingly. “They got me best pal yesterday.”
“Then keep your ’ead cool till the time comes to mention wot you
think of ’em,” returned the sergeant.
Jim and Wally found a chink in the sandbag parapet, and looked
out eagerly ahead. All was quiet. The sparrows, made bold by the
extraordinary peace of the morning, still chirped and twittered on
No-Man’s Land. No sound came from the German trenches beyond.
Here and there a faint smoke-wreath curled lazily into the air, telling
of cooking-fires and breakfast.
“How do they know they’re coming?” Wally whispered.
“Aeroplane reconnaissance, I suppose,” Jim answered, pointing to
two or three specks floating in the blue overhead, far out of reach of
the anti-aircraft guns. “They’ve been hovering up there all the
morning. Feeling all right, Wal?”
“Fit as a fiddle. I suppose I’ll be in a blue funk presently, but just
now I feel as if I were going to a picnic.”
“So do I—and the men are keen as mustard. I thought little
Wilson would be useless; you know how jumpy he’s been since we
came here. But look at him, there; he’s as steady and cool as any
sergeant. They’re good boys,” said the subaltern, who was not yet
twenty.
“Mind your ’ead, sir!” came in an agonized whisper from a
corporal below; and Jim ducked obediently under the lee of the
parapet.
“It’s quite hot,” he said, peering again through his peep-hole.
“There’s a jolly breeze springing up, though.”
The breeze came softly over No-Man’s Land, fluttering the wings
of the cheerful sparrows. Across the scarred strip of grass a low,
green cloud wavered upwards. It grew more solid, spreading in a
dense wall over the parapet of the German trench.
“What on earth——?” Jim began.
The green cloud seemed to hesitate. Then the wind freshened a
little, and it suddenly blew forward across No-Man’s Land, growing
denser as it came. Before it, the sparrows fled suddenly, darting to
the upper air with shrill chirpings of alarm. But one bird, taken
unawares, beat his wings wildly for a moment, flying forward. Then
he pitched downwards and the cloud rolled over him.
“What is it?” uttered Wally.
Before the parapet of the British trench ahead of them the cloud
stood for a moment, and then toppled bodily into the trench. It fell
as water falls like a heavy thing. From its green depths came hoarse
shouts, and rifles suddenly went off in an irregular fusillade. Then
the cloud rolled over, leaving the trench full of vapour, and stole
towards the second British line.
A great cry came ringing down the trench.
“Gas! It’s their filthy gas!”
It was a new thing, and no one was prepared for it. Across the
Channel, England was shuddering over the first reports of the
asphyxiating gas attacks, and the women of England were working
night and day at the first half-million respirators to be sent out to the
troops. But to the men in the trenches there had come only vague
rumours of what the French and Canadians had suffered: and they
had been slow to believe. It was not easy to realize, unseeing, the
full horror of that most malignant device with which Science had
blackened War. A few of the officers had respirators—dry, and
comparatively useless. The men were utterly unprotected. Like
sheep waiting for the slaughter they stood rigidly at attention,
waiting for the evil green cloud that blew towards them, already
poisoning the clean air with its noxious fumes.
 “Tie your handkerchiefs round your mouths and nostrils!” Jim
Linton shouted. “Quick, Wally!”
He caught at the younger boy’s handkerchief and knotted it
swiftly. The corporal shook his head.
“Most of ’em ain’t got no ’ankerchers, sir,” he said grimly. “They
will clean their rifles with ’em.”
Then came another cry.
“Look out—they’re coming!”
Dimly, behind the cloud of gas, they could see shadowy forms
clambering over the parapet of the enemy trench; German soldiers,
unreal and horrible in their hideous respirators, with great goggle
eyes of talc. Ahead, the quick spit of machine-guns broke out
spitefully; and, as if in answer, Garrett’s Maxims opened fire. Then
the gas was upon them: falling from above over the parapet,
stealing like a live thing down the communication trench that led
from the first line, where already the Germans were swarming. Men
were choking, gasping, fighting for air; dropping their rifles as they
tore at their collars, losing their heads altogether in the horror of the
silent attack. A little way down the trench Anstruther was trying to
rally them, his voice only audible for a few yards. Jim echoed him.
“Come on, boys! it’s better in the open. Let’s get at them!”
He sprang up over the parapet, Wally at his side. There were
bullets whistling all round them, but the air was more free—it was
Paradise compared to the agony of suffocation in the trench. Some
of the men followed. Jim leaped back again, dragging at others;
pushing, striking, threatening; anything to get them up above,
where at least they might die fighting, not like rats in a hole. He was
voiceless, inarticulate; he could only point upwards, and force them
over the parapet and into the bullet-swept space. Wally was there—
was Wally killed? Then he saw him beside him in the trench,
dragging at little Private Wilson, who had fallen senseless. Together
they lifted him and flung him out at the rear, turning to fight with
other men who had given up and were leaning against the walls,
choking. Above them Anstruther was getting the men into some
semblance of formation to meet the oncoming rush of Germans. He
called to them sharply, authoritatively.
 “Linton!—Meadows! Come out at once!”
Jim tried to obey. Then he saw that Wally was staggering, and
flung his arm round him; but the arm was suddenly limp and
helpless, and Wally pitched forward on his face and lay still, gasping.
Jim tried to drag him up, fighting with the powerlessness that was
creeping over him. Behind him the roar of artillery grew faint in his
ears and died away, though still he seemed to hear the steady spit
of Garrett’s machine-guns. He sagged downwards. Then black,
choking darkness rushed upon him, and he fell across the body of
his friend.
 “Jim Linton sat on a small box outside his dug-out . . .”

Jim and Wally] [Page 11

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