"Bensington! We've bagged another of the rats!"

"Cossar's bagged another of the rats!"


VI.

When the Expedition had finished refreshment, the night had fully come.
The stars were at their brightest, and a growing pallor towards Hankey
heralded the moon. The watch on the rat-holes had been maintained, but
the watchers had shifted to the hill slope above the holes, feeling this
a safer firing-point. They squatted there in a rather abundant dew,
fighting the damp with whisky. The others rested in the house, and the
three leaders discussed the night's work with the men. The moon rose
towards midnight, and as soon as it was clear of the downs, every one
except the rat-hole sentinels started off in single file, led by Cossar,
towards the wasps' nest.

So far as the wasps' nest went, they found their task exceptionally
easy--astonishingly easy. Except that it was a longer labour, it was no
graver affair than any common wasps' nest might have been. Danger there
was, no doubt, danger to life, but it never so much as thrust its head
out of that portentous hillside. They stuffed in the sulphur and nitre,
they bunged the holes soundly, and fired their trains. Then with a
common impulse all the party but Cossar turned and ran athwart the long
shadows of the pines, and, finding Cossar had stayed behind, came to a
halt together in a knot, a hundred yards away, convenient to a ditch
that offered cover. Just for a minute or two the moonlit night, all
black and white, was heavy with a suffocated buzz, that rose and mingled
to a roar, a deep abundant note, and culminated and died, and then