T. C. Bridges

“ A peculiarity of the wood, no doubt on account of its damp, sheltered position, was the immense amount of ivy which covered the massive trunks with clinging tendrils and dark green leaves. There was food too, for the oaks whose roots no doubt penetrated far below the level of the stream, had a fair crop of acorns, and, better still, there were hazel-bushes close along the water’s edge which were still fairly full of ripe nuts. The place was a perfect Paradise from a squirrel’s point of view, and my half-joking suggestion of spending the winter in it speedily became a fixed idea. ”

“ The plop of a water-rat diving into a pool in the stream on the far side of the coppice came as clearly to my ears as though the water had been at the bottom of our own tree instead of several hundred yards away, and when the wood-pigeons began to move unseen in the smother, the clatter of their wings was positively startling.
We squirrel folk are not fond of wet, so we lay still and snug in our cosy retreat until the sun began to eat up the mist. ”

“ Next instant there was a crash of musketry, and rifles spat fire and lead from a long semicircle behind the spot from which the star shell had risen.
The man next but one to Ken threw up his arms and dropped without a sound. A score of others fell.
'Gee, but you were right, Ken!' muttered Dave. 'Fix bayonets!' Colonel Conway's voice rang like a trumpet above the crackle of the firing.
Instantly came the clang of steel as the bayonets slipped into their sockets. Men were falling fast, but the rest stood straining forward like greyhounds on a leash.
'Not a shot, mind you. Give 'em the steel. ”

“ The gale lasted two whole days and nights, and then it cleared and left a hard blue sky from which the small white flecks of wind-cloud vanished one by one, and on the fourth morning we woke to find the grass white with hoar frost and a keen tang in the air which filled us with a wild delight in the mere fact of being alive. Rusty, Hazel and I sallied forth and tore round and round like three mad things, flinging ourselves from bough to bough, rattling up and down the huge trunk and wide-spreading [102] branches, playing all manner of practical jokes on one another. ”

“ THE OPEN PORT
'Fun!' said Ken Carrington, as he leaned over the rail of the transport, 'Cardigan Castle,' and watched the phosphorescent waters of the Aegean foaming white through the darkness against her tall side. 'Fun!' he repeated rather grimly. 'You won't think it so funny when you find yourself crawling up a cliff with quick-firers barking at you from behind every rock, and a strand of barbed wire to cut each five yards, to say nothing of snipers socking lead at you the whole time. ”

“ Some winter storm of years long past had torn away a large branch at its junction with the trunk, and rain and weather had rotted the scar till at last a hollow was left large enough to hold a dozen of us. Once it had been full of water, but a green woodpecker boring its nest in the trunk below, the moisture had drained away through the rotten fibres, and now it was dry as a bone, and formed as convenient and comfortable a retreat as any dreyless family of squirrels could possibly desire. ”

“ Ken found himself up against a tall, brown-faced fellow who looked like an Arab and was armed with a long sword. He made a fearful slash at Ken, and though Ken saved his head by a guard with his cutlass, he was beaten to his knees.
Up went the Arab's sword again, Ken saw the glitter in his savage eyes, and thought it was all over when, in the very nick of time, a revolver spat and turned the fierce face into a blood-stained horror.
Struggling up, he saw Roy leap past and fire a second time at a man who was swinging at him with a rifle butt. ”

“ The wood-pigeons still pecked among the beech leaves for mast; great tits and tomtits moved restlessly among the branches of our beech; flights of long-tail tits talked softly in the tops of the evergreens. Finches of many kinds—greenfinch, chaffinch, bullfinch, and even a few hawfinches, feasted on the hawthorn berries which hung thickly on the bare hedges, and began to take their toll of the fast-reddening holly. The privet and mountain-ash berries were gone long ago. These form the pet dessert of bird life, and are always cleaned up almost before they are ripe. ”

“ It is one thing to occupy a trench already made, quite another to dig one under fire. There is no question of standing up and wielding the shovel as if one were digging a garden. Men must lie down and scratch and scrape until they get head cover, then gradually open up a narrow ditch into which they sink slowly.
'I didn't enlist as a blooming navvy,' grunted Roy Horan, who had stuck by Ken and Dave. ”

“ A pair of wood-pigeons were raising their second brood in a fir-tree, not far away from where we lived, and every now and then, with a rapid clatter of wings, one of the old birds came flapping through the aisles of the plantation with food for their two ugly, half-fledged young ones. I wonder, by the by, why a wood-pigeon is so amazingly careless about its nest building. I never can understand how it is that the young ones do not fall off the rough platform of sticks which is their apology for a nest. ”

“ Crash! Vaguely Ken realised that this was a heavier gun than the 12-pounders of the destroyer. He heard a shell roar overhead, then from the destroyer, now no more than a hundred yards away, rose a blinding flash.
'Hurrah!' he heard Roy shout, but the reason he could not imagine. He made a desperate effort to struggle up, felt the blood gush hot from his wound. His head spun, he fell back and knew no more.
Coming back to consciousness after being knocked out is always a slow and painful business. ”

“ He looked up with a hungry gleam in his eyes, but quickly recognizing that he had missed his meal, Master Reynard wasted no time in vain regrets, and trotting sharply off down along the hedge, soon disappeared in the distance. A fox is not particular in snowy weather. All is nuts that comes to his hungry maw.
Yet we were fated to hear once more of our deadliest foe. The snow had gone; cold rain and heavy gales succeeded it, and then one day dawned so mild and soft and sunshiny that even mother and Hazel woke. ”

“ A sound like a maxim gun in the distance smote upon his ears. It grew louder every instant. All, even Henkel, glanced upwards.
'Only an aeroplane, Ken,' said Roy in a whisper. 'By Jove, though, it's one of our chaps.'
Across the rich blue of the evening sky a great Farman biplane came sailing like a gigantic bird. She was barely five hundred feet up, and heading straight for the village. What was more, she was actually coming lower every moment.
Henkel, the other officer, the firing party, the bystanders—all stood with their eyes fixed upon the plane. ”

“ You humans, who never go anywhere without stamping, and running, and talking loudly, and lighting pipes with crackly matches, have no idea what the real life of the woods is like, especially on a fine June afternoon such as this one was. Though our larch was one of a thick clump, yet from the great height of our nest we could see right across into the belt of oaks, beeches, and old thorn-trees which lay along the slope below, and could even catch a glimpse of the tall hedge and bank, and of the sandy turf beyond where the rabbit-warren lay. ”

“ Crash! A second gun spoke, and another shell burst above the beach. From that time on the firing was continuous. The whole beach was scourged with shrapnel, and landing operations became perilous in the extreme.
The men in the trenches fidgeted and swore beneath their breath. There is nothing more trying to troops than to see their comrades suffering and yet be unable to help them.
'Can't we do something?' muttered Dave, as he saw a boat from one of the ships smashed to matchwood by a blast of shrapnel, and her crew and contents scattered into the sea. 'Can't we do something? ”

“ Squirrels, you must know, are never still for more than a few minutes at a time in their ordinary sleep. I know that, whenever I wake at night, and that is very often, especially now that I am no longer young, some of my family are always moving their legs, twitching about like a dog that lies before the fire and hunts rabbits in its dreams. But this was a different thing, this sleep of mother’s—she lay like a dead thing on her side, her splendid brush curled round and over her, and, as we watched, her breathing seemed to slow until it became almost imperceptible. ”

“ But the Colonials, with the bitter memory in their minds of all they had suffered during the previous night and day, were not minded to let them escape so easily. With loud shouts they gave chase. The Turks, good marchers but poor runners, stood no earthly chance in this terrible race, and by scores and hundreds were bayoneted or seized and dragged back as prisoners.
Filled with mad excitement, Ken raced onwards in the forefront of the line. His bayonet was dripping, a red mist clouded his eyes, for the moment he was fighting mad. ”

“ There are to-day whole tracts of beautiful beech woods in Buckinghamshire, where, though food is perhaps as plentiful as anywhere else in England, yet hardly a squirrel is to be seen. Our race has been so harried that they have left altogether. Modern high preserving is what we unlucky squirrels cannot stand. Where the owner’s one idea is to get as large a head of pheasants as the coverts can possibly carry, every other woodland creature goes to the wall, and the keepers shoot us down as mercilessly as they kill kestrels, owls, jays, hedgehogs, and a dozen other harmless birds and beasts. ”

“ The faint popping of rifles was followed by another terrific crash. A second bomb had dropped clean upon one of the larger houses, and exploding on the flat roof had scattered the whole building as a man's foot might scatter an ant's nest. With a roar half the house toppled outwards into the street, blocking it completely.
'Fine! Oh, fine!' cried Roy. 'That chap knows his business. Gee, but I wish we were alongside him.'
'Much use that would be! A plane can't carry four. But don't you see? He has spotted us. Those bombs are meant to give us our chance. It's up to us to take it. Hurry, Roy! ”

“ Before many moments had passed there came a slight whirr, the sound of wings beating on leaves, and with a flop, down fell a great pheasant almost on the heads of the watchers. Quick as a cat, one of the men reached out one arm, seized the bird, and wrung its neck. He had hardly done so when there was another rustle and thud, and a second of our oppressor’s pets shared the fate of the first. ”

“ Ken raised his head cautiously and peered through the embrasure in front. The sight that met his eyes was a terrible one. The scrub for nearly a hundred yards in front of the trench had almost vanished. It had been literally mown down by the storm of bullets which had raged across it all night long. And all the open space was paved with the bodies of dead and wounded men. There were hundreds of them, some on their faces, some on their backs, most of them still enough, a few trying to crawl away, and others moaning feebly. ”

“ If we stayed where we were we would be caught like rats in a trap. It was Rusty who made the jump first out of the bushes and down the sunk fence, and as I followed him I heard the fat man shouting hoarsely: ‘Quick, they’re running away!’
How we scuttled! Even a terrier would have had his work cut out to catch us. There was no cover at all until we reached the far end of the long line of wall, and we strained every nerve to gain the hedge which ran at right angles from the end of it, separating the park from the road. ”