CHAPTER XIV
A CHANCE SHOT
"WHAT are you going to do with yourself, old man?" inquired Eric Greenwood, late assistant-paymaster of H.M.S. "Tantalus," after the court-martial had sat upon the survivors of the lost cruiser and, following its finding, the officers and men of the sunk vessel had been given fourteen days' leave.
"Hardly know yet," replied Farrar. "Run up to town, I expect—may get a bit of excitement there; or else look up some of my people's friends at Lymbury, although it's five years or more since we—that is, my parents—left the place. The governor's got a Staff job out in New Zealand."
"Look here," exclaimed the A.P. impetuously. "Come and sling your hammock at my people's place. My governor has just taken a house at Penkestle, close to where Tressidar's family hang out. The skipper of the 'Antipas' is my revered brother-in-law. I suppose you know that?"
Farrar shook his head.
"Well," continued Greenwood, "that's neither here nor there as far as present circumstances stand. I have an open invite for any of my pals, so how about it? Fishing, shooting, and all that sort of thing, but I'm afraid motoring's dead off."
"Thanks, I'm on," accepted Farrar promptly. Truth to tell he had not been looking forward to his leave with pleasurable anticipations. "Knocking around" without any definite plan of action was distasteful to him, but the A.P.'s invitation put a totally different aspect upon things.
"But I say," he added dubiously, "what about Bruno?"
"Bruno, of course, stands in," declared Greenwood. "My people are very keen on dogs—large ones especially. I'll wire off at once, and we'll catch the 4.45 from Trecurnow. We'll have to change at St. Penibar."
"Where is Penkestle?" asked the sub.
"About four miles from Trebalda: you know where that place is?"
"Heard of it," admitted Farrar. "Holcombe mentioned that the kapitan of U 254 was supposed to have landed there in mufti. Right-o; I'll have my gear together by lunch-time. Hear that, Bruno? We're off to a country-house. A change for you, old boy, after a crowded mess-deck."
The St. Bernard blinked solemnly, as if to imply that he didn't care a brass farthing whether he was on dry land or on the heaving deck of a ship as long as he was in his master's company.
Although only a distance of fifty miles it was seven o'clock before the two young officers arrived at Trebalda Station.
"There's the governor!" exclaimed Eric. "Come along, old man. Pater, let me introduce you to my pal Slogger, otherwise Nigel Farrar, one of the homeless waifs from the old 'Tantalus.' And Bruno, of the same reliable firm."
Mr. Greenwood greeted the sub warmly, although he eyed the huge St. Bernard with misgivings.
"Er—Bruno's almost as big as a donkey," he observed, "but we can't put him out to grass. Still, we'll do our best for him in the commissariat department."
"All ready, pater?" inquired Eric, lifting his portmanteau from the platform.
"Far from it, my boy," replied his parent. "Put that thing on a seat and have a smoke. I'm killing two birds with one stone—hence the ponderous conveyance."
And he indicated a five-seater car waiting outside the station gates.
"What's the move, then?" inquired the A.P.
"More visitors," replied Mr. Greenwood. "Fortunately the house is large. An old friend of mine—one I haven't seen for over twenty years—is arriving by the down train. Barcroft's his name—Peter Barcroft. You've heard me mention him?"
"By Jove, that's strange!" remarked Farrar. "The Blimp johnny who strafed our pal U 254 is a Barcroft. Any relation, I wonder?"
"Yes, his son," replied Mr. Greenwood. "Peter mentioned that his son Billy was in the Naval Air Service. Good, the signal's down. The train seems pretty punctual."
"Come here, Bruno," ordered the sub, noticing that the animal was rubbing his muzzle against the hand of a dark-featured man who was standing by the ticket-gate.
"I don't mind," exclaimed the man, patting the St. Bernard's head. "Used to animals, you know. Fine brute."
With a casual movement he glanced at the dog's collar—a silver-plated one inscribed "Bruno—Sub-Lieutenant N. Farrar, R.N.V.R., H.M.S. 'Tantalus.'"
"H'm!" he muttered. "Quite a coincidence. ...Here! Good dog, go to your master."
Just then the train ran into the station. Amidst the loud noise of doors opening and shutting about a dozen passengers boarded the train, while nearly three times that number alighted. Amongst them was a well-set-up, clean-shaven man in a Norfolk suit.
"Hullo, Greenwood!" he exclaimed briskly.
"Pleased to meet you again after all this long time. By Jove, I recognise you, you see. Looking jolly fit, too."
"I feel fit," admitted his friend. "Work on the land, drilling with the Gorgeous Wrecks, making myself generally useful, and all that sort of thing, don't you know. And war rations suit me, too. Feel twenty years younger than I did before the war, and, by Jove, I'm my own carpenter, bricklayer, plumber, and a dozen other trades rolled into one. If I had known as much ten years ago as I do now, I would have saved hundreds of pounds in wages. But I'm forgetting: my son, Eric; his friend, Mr. Farrar—Mr. Farrar knows your boy, I believe."
"Only by name," corrected the sub. "As a matter of fact he was in command of the Blimp that strafed the U-boat that did us in. We're late of the 'Tantalus.'"
"Oh, was he?" remarked Peter Barcroft drily. "First I've heard of it. Precious little news I get from Billy about his doings."
"True to the traditions of the Great Silent Navy," observed the A.P. "Of course we don't like advertising, but there are times when various little incidents will out."
"Look here," interrupted Mr. Greenwood, beaming affably. "If you are about to start a debate on the subject of the Royal Navy, I'll order the car to return in three hours' time. I say, Barcroft——"
But Peter Barcroft had broken away from the group. Nigel Farrar caught sight of him shaking the hand of the individual who had been fondling his dog.
"Bless my soul, Entwistle!" exclaimed Peter. "What on earth are you doing down here—shadowing me?"
"Hope I shan't have to do that again," replied Philip Entwistle, Secret Service Agent. "I'm on the track of a fellow who dined at an hotel here with the captain of a German submarine. Keep the information to yourself, although before long I may have to enlist the aid of these naval officers. That St. Bernard gave me a clue. Oh, by the by, how are your dogs, Ponto and Nan?"
"Fit as ever, short commons notwithstanding," replied Peter. "I didn't bring them down with me, to their great discontent. Well, I mustn't keep my old friend Greenwood any longer. I'll be bound to run across you in a day or so."
"Who's that fellow, Peter?" asked Mr. Greenwood as the four men and Bruno boarded the waiting car.
"An old friend of mine, a veterinary surgeon," explained Mr. Barcroft. "He lives but a few miles from me. The world is small. I hardly expected to find him here."
A quarter of an hour later the car pulled up at "The Old Croft," at Penkestle, a long, two-storied stone building like many another to be found in Cornwall.
"Show Farrar his room, Eric," said Mr. Greenwood after the guests had been introduced to Mrs. Greenwood and her two daughters: Doris, now Mrs. Ronald Tressidar, and Winifred, a lively girl of seventeen or eighteen. "I'll take Peter to his temporary quarters. Dinner is when, my dear?"
"At eight, for this night only," replied Mrs. Greenwood. "Now, girls, set to. We've each our allotted tasks now, owing to the shortage of servants," she explained. "Eric, you've come home at a very opportune moment."
"How's that, mater?" asked the A.P.
"There's no meat for to-morrow, so you can organise a rabbit-shooting party. You'll like to take a gun, Mr. Farrar?"
"Rather," replied the sub with alacrity.
"And Mr. Barcroft?" inquired the A.P.
Peter was in the act of following his host upstairs. He stopped and shook his head.
"Thanks," he replied. "I'm not taking any just at present," he observed. "Used to do a lot of shooting on the moors. Saw a man... an—er—acquaintance, or, rather, a neighbour, messed about pretty badly through his gun bursting.... He died soon after. It put me off absolutely."
"I'll come, Eric," said Winifred. "That is, if you want me. And you can lend me your small gun. Those twelve-bores kick so."
"Delighted, Freddy, I'm sure," exclaimed her brother with genuine pleasure. "Farrar, old bird, you'll have to look to your laurels. Freddy is a regular terror when she's after bunnies."
Soon after breakfast the following morning the three guns set out, accompanied by a pair of silky-haired spaniels, greatly to Bruno's resentment, for to the St. Bernard things didn't seem at all right that his master should take a couple of insignificant and strange dogs for a stroll, while he was condemned to spend the morning locked up in a shed.
"By Jove, this air is great!" remarked the sub, as they crossed a stile and gained the open moor. "Your governor couldn't have chosen more desolate surroundings, Greenwood. Not a sign of a human being or a habitation for miles ahead. Look here, Miss Greenwood, allow me to carry your gun."
The A.P. laughed as his sister shook her head resolutely.
"Freddy likes to be independent," he observed. "I say, Farrar, you've just told a terminological inexactitude; where are your eyes? There's some one coming this way."
"Yes, you're right," admitted Farrar. "And, strange enough, it's the fellow we saw on Trebalda Station platform: the one who spoke to Mr. Barcroft, you remember?"
"Good morning," exclaimed Entwistle, raising his cap as he approached. "Can you direct me to 'The Croft'?"
"You are going to see your friend, Mr. Barcroft, I presume?" asked the A.P. after giving the required direction. "You are Mr. Entwistle, I think?"
"I am," admitted the Secret Service man, wondering how much Peter had said about him. "And how is your St. Bernard, Mr. Farrar?"
It was the sub's turn to be surprised, only, unlike Entwistle, he expressed it openly.
"I saw your name on the dog's collar," explained Entwistle. "Well, don't let me detain you. I wish you good sport."
"We are bound to see you at lunch," said Eric. "The governor will insist upon your staying."
"You are very hospitable," remarked Entwistle.
"Not at all," protested the A.P. "Simply my governor's deputy, don't you know. The fact that you are a friend of Mr. Barcroft is sufficient guarantee for me to ask you."
The Secret Service man, still in the dark as to how much the young naval officer knew of his affairs, raised his cap to Winifred and hastened in the direction of "The Old Croft," while the trio resumed their way.
"Time to load," remarked Eric as they found themselves confronted by a rounded hill, the face of which was studded with gorse and heather. "We'll be bound to have some sport before we get to the top of Plas Tor. Keep fifty yards apart, and go dead in the eye of the wind: that's the move."
Before Farrar had cautiously covered a distance of a hundred yards, the while ascending the somewhat broken ground, a rabbit, surprised in the open, bolted from almost under his feet. He raised his gun, pulled both triggers—and missed. Somewhat to his mortification a shot rang out on his left and down dropped bunny like a stone.
"Simply had to do it," said Winifred, extracting the still smoking cartridge from her gun. "You let off too soon, Mr. Farrar: before the shots had time to spread."
"A clinking shot that of yours, any way," exclaimed the sub enthusiastically. "Eighty yards."
"Say sixty," corrected the girl, taking the rabbit from one of the spaniels. "Better luck next time, Mr. Farrar."
The sub reloaded, conscious at the same time of a numbing pain in his right shoulder. Letting off both barrels of a twelve-bore simultaneously, he reflected, causes the gun to recoil considerably more than the comparatively slight kick of a .303 Service rifle.
Without the chance of another shot the three "sportsmen" gained the summit of the tor, the A.P. looking considerably dejected at his failure as a prophet.
"Last time I was on leave I bagged seven on this hill," he declared in substantiation of his shattered claim. "Wonder what's up with the little beasts to-day?"
"I see by the papers that rabbits are included in meat rations," observed Winifred. "Consequently, as in other cases, there is an immediate shortage. If only the Controller would place U-boats on the list of controlled articles, they, too, would doubtless disappear."
"Hard lines on submarine hunters, then," added the A.P. "My worthy brother-in-law would be hard up for a job; and as for young Barcroft——"
"Allow me to remind you," interrupted the sub, "that discussing U-boat strafers won't find the ingredients for a rabbit pie. Which way now, old bird?"
Eric Greenwood shaded his eyes and gazed down into the valley, that literally simmered in the blazing sunshine. Everywhere wisps of mist were rising as the sun's rays beat upon the dew-sodden grass.
"We'll try in the direction of Bold Tor," he replied. "It's a good three miles, but we can have something to eat when we get to the top and still get back well in time for lunch."
For the best part of an hour the three guns proceeded at varying distances apart, but ill-luck attended them. Not another rabbit was to be seen, despite the fact that the girl and her two companions moved with deliberate stealth, with the well-trained dogs following silently at Winifred's heels.
"Slow sport," soliloquised the sub. "Well, thank goodness, we're nearly to the top of Broad Tor; then we can ease our jaw-tackle. Hanged if I like being as silent as a Trappist monk."
Suddenly, two swift, brownish objects darted from the cover of a gorse-bush. Farrar had a momentary glimpse of two white tails as the animals changed course and bolted for a place of refuge—a honey-combed bank overhung with low bushes.
Mindful of Winifred's warning, he fired at forty yards. Down dropped one rabbit, kicking frantically, while the other, partly crippled, struggled towards the nearmost hole. With his gun still at the shoulder the sub fired the second barrel.
"Hurrah!" he shouted involuntarily, as the second rabbit dropped; but as he started to run to secure his prizes, he caught a brief glance of a man's head and shoulders above the bushes, one side of his face streaming with blood, ere he dropped to the ground.
"Well done!" exclaimed the A.P., who on hearing the shots was hastening towards the sub.
"Far from it," said Farrar in a low voice. "I say, keep Miss Greenwood back out of it; I've plugged some poor bounder."
"Rot!" exclaimed the A.P. incredulously.
"Fact," protested the luckless sportsman. "Be quick, man! Take her away out of it."
Leaving Greenwood to attempt the futile task the sub forced his way through the undergrowth till he came to the spot where his victim dropped. Lying face downwards on a small plot of grass was a tall, well-built man, unconscious, but breathing stertorously. A cloth cap was hung up in the bushes, having evidently been blown there by a portion of the charge of No. 6 shot. The cap had to a certain extent protected its wearer, for beyond a few slight scratches the top of his head was untouched; but from the right temple downwards to the neck the hard-hitting pellets had done their work only too well.
While Farrar was attempting to render first-aid the A.P. and his sister arrived upon the scene, Winifred insisting on giving her assistance as a member of the V.A.D.
"It looks a worse case than it actually is," she declared in her best professional manner. "And there's no water to be had nearer than the village. The best thing we can do is to get him to the house."
"But how?" asked her brother. "It is almost impossible to get a cart of any description over this rough ground."
"We'll have to carry him," replied Winifred. "Get a couple of those young trees," and she pointed to a clump of ash saplings, the only trees to be found for miles, though fortunately close at hand.
Quickly Eric felled two of the young trees by the simple expedient of firing a charge of shot into each at close range. A knife soon cleared off the shoots, and a pair of serviceable poles, ten or twelve feet in length, were at the disposal of the amateur ambulance party.
The two men's coats—they were in mufti—were then pressed into service to complete the rough-and-ready stretcher, and with Winifred walking by the patient's side to steady any unwonted jolt to the conveyance, the sub and the A.P. carried their unconscious burden, one of the dogs being left to guard the guns until they could be sent for.
It was a back-aching task. The man was heavy, the way rough, and the heat terrific, yet gamely the two naval officers "carried on," resolutely declining to allow Miss Greenwood to bear a hand with the stretcher. Not until they were within a mile of "The Croft" did they fall in with a sturdy Cornish countryman, who willingly relieved Eric of his share. A little farther on another villager was able to perform a like service to the fairly "baked" Farrar, and by the time the party drew within sight of the house nearly a score of curious country folk tailed on. An intelligent youth volunteered to ride on his cycle into Trebalda to fetch a doctor, while the rest of the crowd of spectators hung about the gates as the stretcher was borne through the grounds to the house.