"Oh, I'll tell you. It
was the way they buried the dead out in Klondike. The snow lies (p. 153)
there for six months and it's impossible to dig, so when a man died
they sharpened his toes and drove him into the earth with a mallet."
"I saw a more wonderful thing than that, and it was when we lay in the
barn at Richebourg," said Bill, who was referring to a comfortless
billet and a cold night which were ours a month earlier. "I woke up
about midnight 'arf asleep. I 'ad my boots off and I couldn't 'ardly
feel them I was so cold. 'Blimey!' I said, 'on goes my understandin's,
and I 'ad a devil of a job lacing my boots up. When I thought I 'ad
them on I could 'ear someone stirrin' on the left. It was my cotmate.
'Wot's yer gime?' he says. 'Wot gime?' I asks. 'Yer foolin' about
with my tootsies,' he says. Then after a minute 'e shouts, 'Damn it
ye've put on my boots,' So I 'ad, put on his blessed boots and laced
them mistaking 'is feet for my own."
"We never heard of this before," I said.
"No, cos 'twas ole Jersey as was lying aside me that night, next day
'e was almost done in with the bomb."
"It's jolly quiet here," said Goliath, sitting back in an armchair and
lighting a cigarette. "This will be a jolly holiday."
"I heard an artillery man I met outside, say that this place was (p. 154)
hot," Stoner remarked. "The Irish Guards were here, and they said they
preferred the trenches to the Keep."
"It will be a poor country house," said Mervin, "if it's going to be
as bad as you say.
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