Part 30 (1/2)

Then rose a noise of wheels and horses froons were approaching They dashed up at a great pace, driven wildly, and for one horrid second Peter thought they were going to spill into the ditch at the very spot where he was concealed The wheels passed so close to the edge that they alers Somebody shouted an order and they pulled up a yard or two nearer the bridge The others came up and there was a consultation

Michael swore he had passed no one on the road

'That fool Hannus has seen a ghost,' said the officer testily 'It's too cold for this child's play'

Hannus, alood Gerh up the road,' said the officer 'Kind God, that was a big one!' He stopped and stared at a shell-burst, for the bo fiercer

They stood discussing the fire for a ave thehway and set off along it at a run The noise of the shelling and the wind, together with the thick darkness, made it safe to hurry

He left the road at the first chance and took to the broken country The ground was now rising towards a spur of the Palantuken, on the far slope of which were the Turkish trenches The night had begun by being pretty nearly as black as pitch; even the smoke from the shell explosions, which is often visible in darkness, could not be seen But as the wind blew the snow-clouds athwart the sky patches of stars came out Peter had a compass, but he didn't need to use it, for he had a kind of 'feel' for landscape, a special sense which is born in savages and can only be acquired after long experience by the white man I believe he could shly which part of the line he would try, ht see reason to vary this, and as he an to think that the safest place here the shelling was hottest He didn't like the notion, but it sounded sense

Suddenly he began to puzzle over queer things in the ground, and, as he had never seen big guns before, it took him a moment to fix them Presently one went off at his elboith a roar like the Last Day These were Austrian howitzers-nothing over eight-inch, I fancy, but to Peter they looked like leviathans Here, too, he saw for the first tiuns were searching out the position He was so interested in it all that he poked his nose where he shouldn't have been, and dropped pluun-emplacement

Gunners all the world over are the same-shy people, who hide the detected

A gruff voice cried 'Wer da?' and a heavy hand seized his neck

Peter was ready with his story He belonged to Michael's wagon-team and had been left behind He wanted to be told the way to the sappers' caetic, not to say obsequious

'It is one of those Prussian swine frounner 'Land hiht, et there, for the Russkoes are registering on it'

Peter thanked theht After that he kept a wary eye on the howitzers, and was thankful when he got out of their area on to the slopes up the hill Here was the type of country that was familiar to hi the scrub and boulders He was getting on very well, when once more, close to his ear, cauns now, and the sound of a field-gun close at hand is bad for the nerves if you aren't expecting it Peter thought he had been hit, and lay flat for a little to consider Then he found the right explanation, and crawled forward very warily

Presently he saw his first Russian shell It dropped half a dozen yards to his right,up a mass of mixed earth, snow, and broken stones Peter spat out the dirt and felt very sole shelling, and was now being landed in the thick of a first-class shoithout any preparation He said he felt cold in his stomach, and very wishful to run away, if there had been anywhere to run to But he kept on to the crest of the ridge, over which a big gloas broadening like sunrise He tripped once over a wire, which he took for some kind of snare, and after that went very warily By and by he got his face between two boulders and looked over into the true battle-field

He told me it was exactly what the predikant used to say that hell would be like About fifty yards down the slope lay the Turkish trenches-they were dark against the snow, and now and then a black figure like a devil showed for an instant and disappeared The Turks clearly expected an infantry attack, for they were sending up calciu their line and spraying all the hinterland, not with shrapnel, but with good, solid high-explosives The place would be as bright as day for a moment, all smothered in a scurry of smoke and snow and debris, and then a black pall would fall on it, when only the thunder of the guns told of the battle

Peter felt very sick He had not believed there could be so much noise in the world, and the drue is habitual, the taste of fear-naked, utter fear-is a horrible thing It seems to wash away all histhe shells burst, and confident that any ht be a shattered re hi would get rid of that lump of ice below his heart

Then he could stand it no longer He got up and ran for his life

But he ran forward

It was the craziest perforround which was being watered with HE, but by thehit him He took some fearsome tosses in shell-holes, but partly erect and partly on all fours he did the fifty yards and tuht on top of a dead ht hi, ho after that unnatural pandemonium The next moment a crump took the parapet of the trench some yards to his left, and he was half buried in an avalanche

He crawled out of that, pretty badly cut about the head He was quite cool now and thinking hard about his next step There were men all around him, sullen dark faces as he saw the the parapets and waiting tensely for so They paid no attention to him, for I fancy in that trench units were pretty well mixed up, and under a bad bohbour He found hiround of the trench was littered with ee-cases, and there were many dead bodies

The last shell, as I have said, had played havoc with the parapet In the next spell of darkness Peter crawled through the gap and twisted aer afraid of shells, any more than he was afraid of a veld thunderstoret to the Russians The Turks were behind hier in front

Then the artillery ceased It was so sudden that he thought he had gone deaf, and could hardly realize the blessed relief of it The wind, too, seemed to have fallen, or perhaps he was sheltered by the lee of the hill There were a lot of dead here also, and that he couldn't understand, for they were new dead Had the Turks attacked and been driven back? When he had gone about thirty yards he stopped to take his bearings On the right were the ruins of a large building set on fire by the guns There was a blur of woods and the debris of walls round it Away to the left another hill ran out farther to the east, and the place he was in seemed to be a kind of cup between the spurs Just before hih its rafters, for the sht He wondered if the Russian firing-line lay there