There was one, however,
who was saved by Irish hospitality. An Irish Guardsman, cleaning his
telescopic-rifle as he sat on the trench banquette, and smoking one of
my cigarettes told me the story.
"The coal slack is festooned with devils of snipers, smart fellows
that can shoot round a corner and blast your eye-tooth out at five
hundred yards," he said. "They're not all their ones, neither; there's
a good sprinkling of our own boys as well. I was doing a wee bit of
pot-shot-and-be-damned-to-you work in the other side of the slack, and
my eyes open all the time for an enemy's back. There was one near me,
but I'm beggared if I could find him. 'I'll not lave this place (p. 078)
till I do,' I says to meself, and spent half the nights I was there
prowlin' round like a dog at a fair with my eyes open for the sniper.
I came on his post wan night. I smelt him out because he didn't bury
his sausage skins as we do, and they stunk like the hole of hell when
an ould greasy sinner is a-fryin'. In I went to his sandbagged castle,
with me gun on the cock and me finger on the trigger, but he wasn't
there; there was nothin' in the place but a few rounds of ball an' a
half empty bottle. I was dhry as a bone, and I had a sup without
winkin'. 'Mother of Heaven,' I says, when I put down the bottle, 'its
little ye know of hospitality, stranger, leaving a bottle with nothin'
in it but water. I'll wait for ye, me bucko,' and I lay down in the
corner and waited for him to come in.
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