He stopped speaking while upstairs the maxim clattered off belt after belt of cartridges. The other signalers were shuffling their feet anxiously and looking about them.
"Are we going to stick it here?" said one. "Didn't the sergeant say something about 'opping it?"
"If he did," said the other, "he hasn't given any orders that I've heard. I suppose he'll come back and do that, and we've just got to carry on till then."
The men had to shout now to make themselves heard to each other above the constant clatter of the maxim and the roar of rifle fire. By now they could hear, too, shouts and cries and the trampling rush of many footsteps. The signaler spoke into his instrument again.
"I think the line's fallen back," he said. "I can hear a heap o' men running about there outside, and now I suppose us here is about due to get it in the neck."
There was a scuffle, a rush, and a plunge, and the sergeant shot down through the rear opening and out into the cellar.
"The flank trenches!" he shouted. "Quick! Get on to them--right and left flank--tell them they're to stand fast. Quick, now, give them that first. Stand fast; do not retire."
The signalers leaped to their instruments, buzzed off the call, and getting through, rattled their messages off.
"Ask them," said the sergeant anxiously. "Had they commenced to retire." He breathed a sigh of relief when the answers came. "No," that the message had just stopped them in time.
"Then," he said, "you can go ahead now and tell them the order to retire is cancelled, that the reënforcements have arrived, that they're up in our forward line, and we can hold it good--oh!"
He paused and wiped his wet forehead; "you," he said, turning to the other signaler, "tell them behind there the same thing."
"How in thunder did they manage it, sergeant?" said the perplexed signaler. "They haven't had time since they got my message through."
"No," said the sergeant, "but they've just had time since they got mine."
"Got yours?" said the bewildered signaler.
"Yes, didn't I tell you?" said the sergeant. "When I went out for a look round that time, I found an artillery signaler laying out a new line, and I got him to let me tap in and send a message through his battery to headquarters."