Part 10 (1/2)

The bullet struck a ledge of white rock with the now familiar metallic ”tink!”

I went on moving quickly to get behind a thorn-bush--the only cover near at hand. Here, at any rate, I should be out of sight.

”Ping!”

”Crack--ping!”

I could hear the report of the rifle. I lay flat on my stomach, grovelled my face into the sandy soil and lay like a snake and as still as a tortoise.

I waited for about ten minutes. It seemed an hour, at least, to me. The sniper did not shoot again. In front of my thorn-bush was an open s.p.a.ce of pale yellow gra.s.s, with no cover at all. I crawled towards the left flank and tried to creep slowly away. I moved like the hands of a clock--so slowly; about an inch at a time, pus.h.i.+ng forward like a reptile on my stomach, propelling myself only by digging my toes into the earth. My arms I kept stiff by my side, my head well down.

But the sniper away behind that little pear-tree (which stood at the far end of the open s.p.a.ce) had an eagle eye.

”Ping! z-z-pp! ping!”

I lay very still for a long time and then crept slowly back to my thorn-bush.

I tried the right flank, but with the same effect. And now he began shooting through my thorn-bush on the chance of hitting me.

Behind me was a dense undergrowth of thorn, wild-rose bramble, thistle, willow and sage.

I turned about and crawled through this tangle, until at last I came out, scratched and dishevelled and sweating, into the old water-course.

The firing-line was only a few hundred yards away, and the bullets from a Turkish maxim went wailing over my head, dropping far over by the Engineers whom I had pa.s.sed.

I wanted to find those wounded, and I wanted to get past that open s.p.a.ce, and I wanted above all to dodge that sniper. The old scouting instincts of the primitive man came calling me to try my skill against the skill of the Turk. I sat there wiping away blood from the scratches and sweat from my forehead and trying to think of a way through.

I looked at the mountains on my left--the lower ridge of the Kapanja Sirt--and saw how the water-course went up and up and in and out, and I thought if I kept low and crawled round in this ditch I should come out at last close behind the firing-line, and then I could get in touch with the trenches. I could hear the machine-gun of the M--'s rattling and spitting.

I began crawling along the water-course. I had only gone three yards or so, and turned a bend, when I came suddenly upon two wounded men. Both quite young--one merely a boy. He had a bad shrapnel wound through his boot, crus.h.i.+ng the toes of his right foot. The other lay groaning upon his back--with a very bad shrapnel wound in his left arm. The arm was broken.

The boy sat up and grinned when he saw me.

”What's up?” asked his pal.

”Red Cross man,” says the boy; and then: ”Any water?”

”Not a drop, mate,” said I. ”Been wounded long?”

”Since yesterday evening,” says the boy.

”Been here all that time?” I asked. (It was now mid-afternoon.)

”Yes: couldn't get away”--and he pointed to his foot.

”'E carn't move--it's 'is arm. We crawled 'ere.”

”I'll be back soon with stretchers and bandages,” I said, and went quickly back along the water-course and then past the Engineers.