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"What's the matter?" was the reply; and the boy gazed in his face in a dazed, half-stupid way. |
"Don't you remember, lad?" |
"No," was the reply. "Where's the ridgment?" |
"Over yonder. Somewhere about the mouth of the valley, I expect." |
"Oh, all right. What time is it?" |
"I should think about five. Why?" |
"Why?" said the boy. "Because there will be a row. Why are we here?" |
"Waiting till you are better before trying to join our company." |
"Better? Have we been resting, then, because my feet were so bad with the marching?" |
Pen was silent as he half-knelt there, listening wonderingly to his comrade's half-delirious queries, and asking himself whether he had better tell the boy their real position. |
"So much marching," continued the boy, "and those blisters. Ah, I remember! I say, private, didn't I get a bullet into me, and fall right down here? Yes, that's it. Here, Private Gray, what are you going to do?" |
"Ah, what are we going to do?" said the young man sadly. "I was in hopes that you would be so much better, or rather I hoped you might, that we could creep along after dark and get back to our men; but I am afraid--" |
"So'm I," said the boy bitterly, as he tried to move himself a little, and then sank back with a faint groan. "Couldn't do it, unless two of our fellows got me in a sergeant's sash and carried me." |
"I'd try and carry you on my back," said Pen, "if you could bear it." |
"Couldn't," said the boy abruptly. "I say, where do you think our lads are?" |
"Beaten, perhaps taken prisoners," said Pen bitterly. |
"Serve 'em right--cowards! To go and leave us behind like this!" |
"Don't talk so much." |
"Why?" |
"It will make you feverish; and it's of no use to complain. They couldn't help leaving us. Besides, I was not left." |
"Then how come you to be here?" said the boy sharply. |
"I came after you, to help you." |
"More old stupid you! Didn't you know when you were safe?" |
Pen raised his brows a little and looked half-perplexed, half-amused at the irritable face of his comrade, who wrinkled up his forehead with pain, drew a hard breath, and then whispered softly, "I say, comrade, I oughtn't to have said that there, ought I?" |
Pen was silent. |
"You saw me go down, didn't you?" |
Pen bowed his head. |
"And you ran back to pick me up? Ah!" he ejaculated, drawing his breath hard. |
"Wound hurt you much, my lad?" |
"Ye-es," said the lad, wincing; "just as if some one was boring a hole through my shoulder with a red-hot ramrod." |
"Punch, my lad, I don't think it's a bad wound, for while you were asleep I looked, and found that it had stopped bleeding." |
"Stopped? That's a good job; ain't it, comrade?" |
"Yes; and with a healthy young fellow like you a wound soon begins to heal up if the wounded man lies quiet." |
"But I'm only a boy, private." |
"Then the wound will heal all the more readily." |
"I say, how do you know all this?" said the boy, looking at him curiously. |
"By reading." |
"Reading! Ah, I can't read--not much; only little words. Well, then, if you know that, I have got to lie still, then, till the hole's grown up. I say, have you got that bullet safe?" |
"Oh yes." |
"Don't you lose it, mind, because I mean to keep that to show people at home. Even if I am a boy I should like people to know that I have been in the wars. So I have got to lie still and get well? Won't be bad if you could get me a bundle or two of hay and a greatcoat to cover over me. The wind will come down prett... |
"Nonsense, Punch! What for?" |
"Sticking to a comrade like this. I have been thinking about it, and I call it fine of you running back to help me, with the Frenchies coming on. Yes, I know. Don't make faces about it. The colonel will have you made corporal for trying to save me." |
"Of course!" said Pen sarcastically. "Why, I'm not much older than you--the youngest private in the regiment; more likely to be in trouble for not keeping in the ranks, and shirking the enemy's fire." |
"Don't you tell me," said the boy sharply. "I'll let the colonel and everybody know, if ever I get back to the ranks again." |
"What's that?" said Pen sharply. "If ever you get back to the ranks again! Why, you are not going to set up a faint heart, are you?" |
"'Tain't my heart's faint, but my head feels sick and swimmy. But, I say, do you think you ought to do any more about stopping up the hole so as to give a fellow a chance?" |
"I'll do all I can, Punch," said Pen; "but you know I'm not a surgeon." |
"Course I do," said the boy, laughing, but evidently fighting hard to hide his suffering. "You are better than a doctor." |
"Better, eh?" |
"Yes, ever so much, because you are here and the doctor isn't." |
The boy lay silent for a few minutes, evidently thinking deeply. |
"I say, private," he said at last, "I can't settle this all out about what's going to be done; but I think this will be best." |
"What?" |
"What I said before. You had better wait till night, and then creep off and follow our men's track. It will be awkward in the dark, but you ought to be able to find out somehow, because there's only one road all along by the side of this little river. You just keep along that while it's dark, and trust to luck when ... |
"And if they are not able to--what then?" said Pen, smiling. |
"Well, I shall wait till I get so hungry I can't wait any longer, and then I will cry _chy-ike_ till the Frenchies come and pick me up. But, I say, they won't stick a bayonet through me, will they?" |
"What, through a wounded boy!" said Pen angrily. "No, they are not so bad as that." |
"Thank ye! I like that, private. I have often wished I was a man; but now I'm lying here, with a hole in my back, I'm rather glad that I am only a boy. Now then, catch hold of my water-bottle. It will soon be dark enough for you to get down to the river; and you mustn't lose any time. Oh, there's one thing more, t... |
"Yes, when I carry it," said Pen quietly. |
"Well, you are going to carry it now, aren't you?" |
"No," said Pen quietly. |
"Oh, you mean, not till you have fetched the water?" |
Pen shook his head. |
"What do you mean, then?" |
"To do my duty, boy." |
"Of course you do; but don't be so jolly fond of calling me boy. You said yourself a little while ago that you weren't much older than I am. But, I say, you had better go now; and I suppose I oughtn't to talk, for it makes my head turn swimmy, and we are wasting time; and--oh, Gray," the boy groaned, "I--I can't help ... |
The boy uttered a faint cry of agony as he tried to stretch out his hand, which only sank down helplessly by his side. |
"Well, good-bye," he panted, as Pen's dropped slowly upon the quivering limb. "Well, why don't you go?" |
"Because it isn't time yet," said Pen meaningly, as after a glance round he drew some of the overhanging twigs of the nearest shrub closer together, and then passed his hand across the boy's forehead, and afterwards held his wrist. |
"Thank you, doctor," said the boy, smiling. "That seems to have done me good. Now then, aren't you going?" |
"No," said Pen, with a sigh. |
"I say--why?" |
"You know as well as I do," replied Pen. |
"You mean that you won't go and leave me here alone? That's what you mean." |
"Yes, Punch; you are quite right. But look here. Suppose I was lying here wounded, would you go off and leave me at night on this cold mountain-side, knowing how those brutes of wolves hang about the rear of the army? You have heard them of a night, haven't you?" |
"Yes," said the boy, shudderingly drawing his breath through his tightly closed teeth. "I say, comrade, what do you want to talk like that for?" |
"Because I want you to answer my question: Would you go off and leave me here alone?" |
"No, I'm blessed if I would," said the boy, speaking now in a voice full of animation. "I couldn't do it, comrade, and it wouldn't be like a soldier's son." |
"But I am not a soldier's son, Punch." |
"No," said the boy, "and that's what our lads say. They don't like you, and they say--There, I won't tell you what." |
"Yes, tell me, Punch. I should like to know." |
"They say that they have not got anything else against you, only you have no business here in the ranks." |
"Why do they say that?" |
"Because, when they are talking about it, they say you are a gentleman and a scholard." |
"But I thought I was always friendly and sociable with them." |
"So you are, Private Gray," cried the boy excitedly; "and if ever I get back to the ranks alive I'll tell them you are the best comrade in the regiment, and how you wouldn't leave me in the lurch." |
"And I shall make you promise, Punch, that you never say a word." |
"All right," said the boy, with a faint smile, "I'll promise. I won't say a word; but," he continued, with a shudder which did not conceal his smile, "they will be sure to find it out and get to like you as much as I do now." |
"What's the matter, Punch?" said Pen shortly. "Cold?" |
"Head's hot as fire, so's my shoulder; but everywhere else I am like ice. And there's that swimming coming in my head again.--I don't mind. It's all right, comrade; I shall be better soon, but just now--just now--" |
The boy's voice trailed off into silence, and a few minutes later young Private Penton Gray, of his Majesty's newly raised --th Rifles, nearly all fresh bearers of the weapon which was to do so much to win the battles of the Peninsular War, prepared to keep his night-watch on the chilly mountain-side by stripping off h... |
CHAPTER THREE. |
WHERE THE WOLVES HOWL. |
"Ugh!" A long, shivering shudder following upon the low, dismal howl of a wolf. |
"Bah! How cold it is lying out here in this chilly wind which comes down from the mountain tops! I say, what an idiot I was to strip myself and turn my greatcoat into a counterpane! No, I won't be a humbug; that wasn't the cold. It was sheer fright--cowardice--and I should have felt just the same if I had had a bla... |
Pen Gray lay thinking in the darkness, straining his ears the while to try and convince himself that the faint sound he heard was not a movement made by a prowling wolf scenting them out; and as he lay listening, he pictured to himself the gaunt, grisly beast creeping up to spring upon him. |
"Only fancy!" he said sadly. "That wasn't the breathing of one of the beasts, only the wind again that comes sighing down from the mountains.--I wish I was more plucky." |
He stretched out his hand and laid his rifle amongst the shrubs with its muzzle pointed in the direction from whence the sighing sound had come. |
"I'll put an end to one of them," he muttered bitterly, "if I don't miss him in the dark. Pooh! They won't come here, or if they do I have only to jump up and the cowardly beasts will dash off at once; but it is horrid lying here in the darkness, so solitary and so strange. I wouldn't care so much if the stars would... |
The young soldier laughed a soft, low, mocking kind of laugh. |
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