ey Street it was agreed that Major Foolhardy was a
Sahib. Twice a day every bay in the trench system was cursed by him.
"God! give me ten Turks and a dog, and I'd capture the whole of this
sector any hour of the day or night," and his head was over the
parapet in broad daylight, examining the Turkish peepholes. It was a
common saying that he would be hit one fine morning.

The morning came. The Signal Officer and I were sitting in the
Headquarters Mess, sipping an eleven o'clock cherry brandy, and
wondering why the General and the Brigade Major had not returned
from their tour of the trenches. Headquarters were situated in Gully
Ravine, that prince among ravines on the Peninsula. From my place I
could see the gully floor, which was the dry bed of a water-course,
winding away between high walls of perpendicular cliffs or steep,
scrub-covered slopes, as it pursued its journey, like some colossal
trench, towards the firing line. Down the great cleft, while I
looked, a horseman came riding rapidly. He was an officer, with a
slight open wound in his chin, and he rode up to our door and said:
"Hardy's hit. A hole in the face."

He was followed by the General, whose clothes and hands were
splashed with Major Hardy's blood. The General told us what had
happened. He had been talking to Hardy and some others on Fusilier
Bluff, when the infamous whizz-bang gun--that messenger of Satan
sent to buffet us--shot a shell whose splinters took the Major in
the face and lungs. He dropped, saying "Dammit, I'm hit, _what_,"
and was now being taken in a dying condition down Gully Ravine to
the Field Ambulance.

It surprised me what an everyday affair this tragedy seemed. There
were expressions of sorrow, but no hush of calamity. Jests were made
at lunch, and all ate as heartily as usual. "Well, he lasted ten
days," said the Brigadier, "which is more than a good many have
done."

Personally, I found myself repeating, in my wool-gathering way, the
word "Two." Already two out of the five who sat down to lunch
together that first day on board the _Rangoon_ had been killed--and,
for that matter, by the same gun. "Two." "The knitting women counted
_two_." Ah! that was what I was thinking of. The knitting women had
knitted two off the strength of that little company. Monty, Doe, and
myself were left. I wondered which of those would have fallen when
the knitting women should count "Three."

It was not difficult to prophesy. Monty, though he w