You had better luck than Canute."
"Besides," said the chef-major, "you can always say that you had front
row stage box."
There was nothing to do to save my face but to laugh with them. And they
were still laughing when they tramped across the road to dinner. I
returned to the house rather mortified at having been led into such an
unnecessary display of feeling, but I suppose I had been in need of some
sort of an outlet.
After dinner they came back to the lawn to lie about smoking their
cigarettes. I was sitting in the arbor. The battle had become a duel
of heavy artillery, which they all found "magnificent," these men who
had been in such things.
Suddenly the chef-major leaped to his feet.
"Listen--listen--an aeroplane."
We all looked up. There it was, quite low, right over our heads.
"A Taube!" he exclaimed, and before he had got the words out of his
mouth, Crick-crack-crack snapped the musketry from the field behind
us--the soldiers had seen it. The machine began to rise. I stood like
a rock,--my feet glued to the ground,--while the regiment fired over my
head. But it was sheer will power that kept me steady among these men
who were treating it as if it were a Fourteenth of July show.
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