Part 34 (1/2)

He could hear the excited clamour as men left the trench and ran towards it; and even in the midst of his extraordinary peril he was fired with a wild desire to escape.

His manoeuvre had not been seen, and, lowering himself rapidly hand under hand, he gained the foot of the tree which had proved his salvation, torn and bleeding, but with every nerve of mind and body on the alert.

”They've not got me yet!” he muttered, as he looked about him; and, crawling on hands and knees, crept under the trunk of a fallen tree half a dozen yards away, where he lay down flat on his face.

The very ground beneath him seemed to shake with every discharge, and the roar of the firing was continuous. Not only were both sides flinging a terrific barrage to check the arrival of reinforcements, but half a dozen isolated actions were taking place at various points of the extended battle line. From Trones Wood to Contalmaison Villa heavy fighting was in progress, and Dennis raged inwardly that by his own fault he should have neither act nor part in any of it.

Presently, as he lay with his ear to the ground, he caught another sound much nearer than that of the firing--the thud of men running in heavy boots in his vicinity; and, worming himself still deeper among the undergrowth that surrounded the fallen tree, he drew his Webley revolver and waited.

About a dozen of the enemy came past the tree on either side of it, peering this way and that, and stirring such brushwood as remained with their fixed bayonets.

”Pooh!” said one of them, ”this is a fool's quest. What is the good of looking for a man who has got a broken neck by this time?”

”What is the good of the war, I should like to know?” replied one of his companions. ”For my part, I am so sick of this terrible life that I would willingly surrender.”

”You had better not let our captain hear you talk like that, or you will be shot, my friend,” said another of them; ”though I dare say, if we were honest, two-thirds of the battalion would agree with you. But it is very certain the Englishman is not here, and the sooner we get back the better.”

They pa.s.sed on; and as the crackle of their going among the bushes died away quickly, Dennis drew a deep breath of relief. He had no idea where he was, for the whole of that rolling country was dotted with irregular patches of woodland, his map case was gone, and the balloon had drifted considerably to the east before it fell.

He knew it would be wiser for him to wait until nightfall and take advantage of the moonlight; but the desire to rejoin his men was too strong to be resisted; and after cautiously peering over the undergrowth he crept from his concealment, and dodged from bush to bush until he reached the edge of the wood.

There the hum of voices warned him that he was only a few yards from the parados of an enemy trench--and not a very deep one at that--for as he parted the brambles behind which he cowered, he could see the round forage caps and shaven heads in front of him.

For an hour he lay there, watching and listening, hoping against hope that our fellows would deliver a frontal attack on the trench, which was thinly held.

Once, indeed, the alarm was given; the enemy manned the fire-step, and the machine-gunners were on the _qui vive_; but after a while the threatened danger had evidently pa.s.sed, for they stood down again, greatly relieved.

Every now and then a British sh.e.l.l burst in the wood behind him, tearing off branches and great strips of bark, and bringing the slender trees down with a crash.

”This won't do, Dennis Dashwood, my friend,” he murmured. ”The way is barred here. Let us see how far their trench extends. I'll swear that was a British cheer on the left.” And he crawled back again deeper into the trees, whose shadows were now falling in long lines as the afternoon waned.

Taking his bearings, he worked his way from sh.e.l.l hole to sh.e.l.l hole, now pa.s.sing through a belt of timber comparatively unscathed, now encountering a stretch that had been heavily sh.e.l.led, where the trees seemed to stand on their heads with their roots in the air.

Always keeping his eyes on the sky, across which the clouds were drifting, he suddenly found himself on the edge of a rolling strip of open country sloping gradually down in what he imagined to be the direction of the British line; but to attempt to cross it would have been suicidal, for a rain of German sh.e.l.ls burst furiously among the neglected fields.

The wood, straggling out still eastward, seemed to indicate the route he must follow; and, without knowing it, he crossed the identical road our troops had taken earlier in the day when they went up to the capture of Bazentin village.

If he could only pa.s.s the limit of the German barrage he had an idea that he would find himself among friends before long; and he was right, although the manner of his meeting them was very unexpected.

He paused as the trees suddenly came to an end, and was astonished to see a riderless horse trotting towards him. His astonishment increased as he recognised the saddlery to be British. There was no other living creature in sight. A waving wheatfield, among which some scarlet poppies were growing, marked the skyline, beyond which the ground fell away, and far off in the distance across the wheat was the top of another wood.

”That's a trooper's mount if ever I saw one,” said Dennis. And as the mare, with nostrils distended and ears set forward, neighed loudly, he jumped out of his concealment and caught her rein.

”Whoa, little lady--steady!” he said soothingly. ”Ah, if you could only speak, and tell me where you have come from!”

He had some difficulty in bringing her to a stand, for she was quivering from the effects of recent alarm; and he saw a red smear on the leather wallets, and the saddle flap on the near side had been cut by a bullet.

As he placed his foot in the stirrup and swung himself up, rifle fire suddenly opened from somewhere beyond the ridge of the wheat. He was down again in an instant, and leading the mare cautiously forward through the corn.

Craning his neck above the waving grain, he saw the white line of a trench farther down the slope, and beyond it, retiring at a hand gallop, a row of brown dots in extended order, which he knew to be British cavalry!