May 29, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER 
" Got to do something. Can't see the beggar," He tapped tbe 
mirror of the periscope angrily, as one taps the barometer to 
try and make the weather change. Evidently the fellow was 
in a tree, but which tree 1 There were quite twenty or thirty 
trees big enough and thick enough to hide a man. He stared; 
there was no movement, nothing; just then not even the wind 
stirred a leaf. Second-Lieutenant Marlowes's meditation 
became profound; he was a rather exquisite youug man, and 
in other days made a living by deciphering hieroglyphs at the 
British Museum. He held a firm little chin in an agreeably 
manicured hand, but he stared no longer into the mirror; he 
now wore the air of abstraction that came to him when he had 
to decide whether a new inscription was of the period of 
Rameses I. or of that of Sesostris. Round him the men went 
on reading and smoking in the peace of life that is so near 
death. 
It was a very long time later when Marlowes's face lit up, 
grew almost laughing. He signed to a man, half whispered. 
" Yes, sir," said the man, rather blankly. 
" You quite understand ? Melons if you like — anything 
of that sort." 
"Yes, sir." 
The half-company watched their officer at some very 
curious work. With his own manicured hands he drove two 
boards into the side of the trench; the first two feet from the 
ground, the second about five. Then he bored in each a 
mysterious hole, and passed through the two holes a still more 
incomprehensible stake. He did that again, some fifty yards 
further along. An excitement passed along the line, and the 
eergeant-major, who had not been in London for twenty years, 
murmured something about Maskelyne and Cooke. Conver- 
•ations grew fervid; eyes followed, and discipline alone 
forbade questions. The war was forgotten. There was 
nothing of war in the air, only now and then the crack of a 
rifle, far away on the right or left, and the rumble, so distant 
as to be only the ordinary accompaniment of life, of the 
French artillery some seven or eight miles to the north. 
Marlowes, sitting by the side of his apparatus, looked irritat- 
Irgly like the sphinx. 
The feeling in the trench grew tense. A man was 
•peaking to Marlowes, oEEering him two large, very dirty 
objects. " The best I could do, sir," said the man. " You 
•ee, sir, I didn't know the French for melon." 
" Oh, this'll do very well," said Marlowes, fingering the 
earthy lumps. " What are they ? Big potatoes ? " 
The private smiled. " No, sir; they call 'em swedes." 
"Ah!" said Marlowes. "I'll remember that. But 
now for some fun." 
The whole half-company stared. Even the sentries 
grew negligent and went unreproved, for the sergeants, too, 
could not keep their eyes away from the extraordinary 
picture of their officer, who was impaling the swedes upon 
the stakes and moving these up and down through the holes 
in the boards. They were beginning to understand. Then, 
«s Marlowes stuck upon the first big vegetable a forage cap, 
they grasped. With infinite caution, hugging the wall, Mar- 
lowes raised the stake and its burden in the air so that no 
more than a moving gleam of khaki cloth could be seen over 
the edge of the trench. 
The sergeant-major sneered. "He's fashing himself a 
lot to draw their fire." 
Marlowes raised the stake a little higher. There was a 
•harp crack. A quiver went through him as if he were hold- 
ing that stake very hard. The forage cap descended; there 
was a hole on the extreme left of the swede. 
" Sergeant," said the officer, " see that nobody touches 
that." 
Half an hour later, at the second point, it was a cap that 
rose above the other swede. The sniper was waiting, it 
seemed, for as soon as it rose the crack came and the bullet, 
boring through the centre of the swede, buried itself in the 
further wall. A suspicion ran through the trench that in this 
was something odd, that the strange young man with the 
dandy air was plotting. But what ? In that minute from end to 
end the question was whispered, " What's he up to? " And 
the inyste^ry became still more my.st«rious, for Second-Lieu- 
tenant Marlowes, after measuring the distance between the 
two stakes with strange accuracy, eat upon the ground, a 
piece o£ paper between his feet which he decorated with the 
most incomprehensible lines. They radiated, intersected, 
producing points y,hich Marlowes, after a stare through the 
periscope, marked " No tree." There were figures, too, things 
f.hat looked like division sums, and three words, " fifty-one 
degrees." At last the young officer made at the intersection 
of two lines a convincing dot. Periscope in hand, he rose to 
his feet; he stared a very long time; he fumbled with strips 
of paper held at varying angles. At last he exclaimed 
sharply. Near the intersection of the line made by the 
bullet which had struck the first swede on the extreme le£t 
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with the direction of the bullet embedded in the centre of 
the second swede stood a tree, a low, very leafy oak. And 
there was no mistaking it; over to the right were three or 
four small oak trees that offered no cover, and on the left was 
nothing for four or five yards. Marlowes gazed at his tree, 
his heart beating with ghoulish delight. " So," he thought, 
" that's where you are! " For a minute or two he examined 
the tree. There was no movement in the leaves, nothing to 
show that it hid watchful eyes and unerring hands. Without 
motion, without life, it was sinister; it was like tall grass in 
which lurks a snake, nimble, able and anxious to strike. 
Within half an hour Marlowes, having obtained from 
his captain relief at the price of a confidence which made his 
senior scoff, cautiously groped along the wall of a ruined 
farmhouse, half a mile beyond the lines. Near by two men 
noiselessly erected a machine gun. They hugged the wall, 
all of them, and the muzzle of the gun slid forward by im- 
perceptible degrees until it slewed round, the corner of broken 
brick. The young man's heart wa.s beating with excitement, 
and as he sighted the gun his hands caressed the black barrel 
as if he loved it. Three times he checked the direction, then 
drew back. "Now!" he whispered. There was a click. 
Then for half a miniite a series of rasps, of sharp explosions 
that deafened him, so near were they, as the maxim spat out 
its two hundred and fifty bullets into the distant leaf. He 
watched it, fascinated by its quick, purposeful action, the 
regular unwinding of the cartridge band. He stopped it, re- 
sighted, and then, for a minute, to various points, playing 
as from a ho.se, bullet after bullet went forth. To make sure, 
he put a few volleys into the " pcssible trees." Through his 
field -glass he saw leaves fly into the air as feathers from a 
wounded pheasant. ... 
It was two days later, just after dawn. A grey drizzle 
fell slowly into the field, now no longer green, but all 
trampled and shell-torn, black wherever the exposed earth 
was sodden with rain. Before Marlowes lay the wood, from 
which he could hear English voices as his men dug themselves 
in. The German trench was in their hands, and feverishly 
they were making ready for the counter-attack. He was 
busy; the parapet had to be rebuilt, and that swiftly, but a 
burning desire filled his heart. He had to see, he must 
see. He took a step away, then returned, half-ashamed, &i 
if he were deserting. But no, he could not bear it. He 
must see. He ran along the trench. He climbed out, ran 
crouching among the trees, leaping over trunks that had been 
smashed by shell. Suddenly he stopped. Here it was, the 
lonely oak tree. He looked up, he could not see very well. 
But dawn was breaking, and suddenly it came up rosy 
through the branches. Touched here and there with tender 
mauve, its face glowing in the first rays o£ the sun, something 
grey and torn hung quite stiff, caught by one foot between 
two branches. For a moment Marlowes watched it, hanging 
there so quiet. He felt touched with pity. Then pity fled 
and he reproached himself: "That's what conies," he 
thought, " of being scientific." 
15* 
