man gunners had drawn
that barrier of fire across the way, a figure was crawling back towards
them, dragging one useless leg behind him.

A very wicked piece of shrapnel had carried young Wetherby's knee-pan
away, and, lodging in the joint, gave the sufferer excruciating agony
every time he knocked it. More than once he almost fainted, and each
time the wounded knee jarred against the rough ground young Wetherby
groaned through his clenched teeth.

"Why don't the stretcher bearers come out?" he moaned.

He could see the strong enemy trench from which they had made their
final advance, and knew by the bustle there that active preparations
were being made to hold it should the Prussians counter-attack again,
which was not unlikely.

The enemy searchlights still concentrated upon it, and the barrage never
ceased to boom and burst behind him with useless expenditure of shells
which had already served their object.

No doubt behind that barrage the discomfited Prussian battalions were
being reorganised, but young Wetherby had no thought of them, all his
energies were directed to getting in as soon as possible that the doctor
might ease his pain.

An unusually heavy burst of shrapnel cut up the ground round about him
as he gained the crest of a bank, where three dead men lay piled one on
top of the other, and, taking advantage of that gruesome cover, a
Prussian officer was crouching on his face. Wetherby paused a moment as
he came alongside him.

"Have you any water in your bottle, Kamerad?" said the man in excellent
English.

"Yes, here you are," replied the boy, unshipping it and handing it to
him; "are you badly hurt?"

The Prussian emptied the bottle before he made answer. "Both legs
broken," he said; "might be worse, might be better."

The man's cynical laugh jarred on young Wetherby's finer feelings,
shaken as he was by the acute agony he was suffering, and he dragged
himself on again, the cold sweat standing in great beads on his
forehead.

He had scarcely placed twice his own length between himself and the
Prussian officer when the brute, who was shamming wounded all the time,
levelled his revolver at the tortured boy, and lodged two blunt-nosed
bullets in his back!

"Great Scott! Did you see that?" shouted Dennis.

"Yus, not 'arf!" And he and Hawke jumped off the mark together, racing
neck and neck out into the open, heedless of a withering fire from some
machine-guns that began to play on the slope