Despite the comforting assurance Jack had written me, just before his departure for France, that his discovery of my marriage, with the consequent blasting of the hope he had cherished for years, had not been the cause of his sailing, I knew he would never have left me if I had not been married.

An Italian drilling machine was at work here, operated by compressed air, drilling holes in the rock for the insertion of dynamite charges, and, by means of gradual blasting, gun pits and cartridge recesses and dug-outs were being created in the stubborn rock.

Our guns had to be dragged into position up a rough mountain track, which at some points was too narrow and at others too weak to allow the passage of a six-inch howitzer without much preliminary blasting and building up.

The man had brought news of the accident, he said; a quantity of dynamite which was to have been used in subterranean blasting had exploded and had done great damage, no one yet knew how great.