(1) On the Field.
A pitch-black night in a rocky valley of Afghanistan: a few stars in the heavy, black, moonless sky only intensifying the almost palpable darkness. A mile or two southwards, where the rocky valley swelled into rocky heights, little flashes of light recurring at intervals, followed by sharp little cracks, showed where the late skirmish and retreat was fighting itself out round about the camp.
Where one of the innumerable broken ridges that seamed the valley made a darker wall across the darkness, two figures were dimly discernible (when you knew where to look for them), the one semi-recumbent, propped against a boulder, the other tall and straight beside him.
"Clear out, Warrington—please go, sir," the voice came faintly from the recumbent figure. "You can get back to camp and send 'em out for me."
"Not likely, young 'un," observed the other. "What says the great R.K.:
"'When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan plains,
And the women come out—to cut up what remains—
Just——'"
"HE EMPTIED HIS REVOLVER INTO THE SILENCE OF THE NIGHT."
"Don't!" said the wounded man, and almost succeeded in stopping a groan between his clenched teeth.
"Poor old Vicary," said Warrington, bending over him. "Let me undo your belt.... Now grab yourself with both hands."
"Fellows in books," said the weak voice, drowsily, "never get hit in the tummy.... Always—head in a bandage—or—arm in sling.... Those Johnnies that write books—ought to come out with us."
There was silence for a time: the far-off flashes grew more rare. The wounded man shifted himself a little and spoke again.
"You're a brick, Warrington!" he said.
"Slightly different from Piccadilly and the Strand this, eh, Vic?"
"I wish the mater could see us now," said Vicary; "she's going to bye-bye just about now. She'd stick you pretty high up in her prayers if she knew."
"The next time you start talking nonsense," said Warrington, "I shall consider you delirious and past hope; and I shall turn tail and make tracks for camp."
A long silence.
"It's getting beastly cold," said Vicary, with a shiver; "I shall never pull through to-night."
"A HOWLING HILLMAN STUMBLED OVER VICARY'S LEGS."
"Cheer up, lad," said Warrington, and pulled at his moustache and glared at the darkness; "only a few hours till daybreak.... Pity you're six foot four in your boots and solid in proportion. I'm not equal to two miles with you on my back, my dainty midget."
"Can't see how you got me this far.... Why don't you sheer off now and get back, and——Oh, God! No! Warrington!... You're not going?"
"Another word like that, my son, and I leave you for Mr. and Mrs. Pathan and all the little Pathans to play with."
"All right—all right, I won't.... Let me hold your boot—I can hardly see you. Oh, Warry, what a funk I am; all the bit o' pluck I had's run out of the leak in my tunic—and I am beastly cold."
Warrington knelt beside him and cursed beneath his breath, and felt his head and hands. The former was very cold and damp, the latter were very wet and warm.
"I must let them know they're wanted, Vic!" he muttered.
The latter did not hear him.
"It'll be in to-morrow's despatches," he murmured. "'Missing: Lieutenant Beverley Warrington and Second Lieutenant Vicary of the ——' What's up, Warry?"
His companion had touched his forehead lightly with his lips, had risen to his feet, and, with his arm raised above his head, had emptied his revolver into the silence of the night.
"They'll know there's a British officer where that revolver is," he said, cheerily.
"But—but, you fool—you dear old silly fool—so will those brown devils!"
"Can't help that!" said Warrington, with a little laugh, "it's too chilly to stop out late to-night." Then in a lower tone, "For the sake of auld lang syne, Vic, my boy."
He reloaded his revolver. When the echoes had rattled away into deeper silence they heard the distant shots suddenly recommence, and distant shouts and howls came to them like whispers. From the invisible hills facing them came dim and confused scuffling and scraping sounds as of cats scrambling down rocks. A moving white blur appeared somewhere in the thick darkness, then another, and another; and a suggestion of low-toned guttural conversation reached Warrington's straining ears. He shifted his revolver to his left hand and gently drew his sword. Then from over there where he knew the camp lay came six revolver shots in quick succession.
"That's Welby!" he said to himself.
Vicary's hand had been grasping the heel of his foot tightly. Now he felt the grip relax; and in a moment more the wounded subaltern slipped a little with a slight tinkle of steel on rock, and groaned.
In another moment a dozen howling hillmen were blazing away at random towards the spot whence the groan seemed to have come. They aimed low and erratically, and Warrington held his fire for a few interminable seconds.
Then they closed in, and one stumbled over Vicary's outstretched legs before they could realise that two British officers were within a yard of them. Warrington felt the man grab at him as he fell, and fired with the barrel of his revolver touching bare skin. After that he fired and slashed very much at random, and the darkness around him shrieked and howled and spat fire, and long graceful knives suggested themselves to the imagination of the man who had seen them at work before.... For ten long minutes Warrington was busy—wondering all the time what Vicary was doing down there between his legs, and how he liked it, and which of them would die first.
Then suddenly in a lull he heard faintly a sound that sent the blood to his head with a rush—the scraping of many boots over rocks some hundreds of yards away, and the dim echo of a word of command. He shouted, and fired his last cartridge above his head that they might see the flash, and flung the empty weapon at a white eyeball that was too near to be pleasant, and cut and pointed and slashed away with renewed vigour. Down the valley and over the rocks came a hoarse, breathless cheer, and pith helmets gleamed faintly in the near distance. He answered the cheer with a croak, and went on carving and hacking as though his foes still confronted him. But they did not wait to meet his friends. They left. All but five, to whom even British troops were a matter of indifference now, as they stayed behind, huddled into a grim semicircle round Lieut. Warrington and Second Lieut. Vicary. When his men came up to him they found him with Vicary in his arms leaning against the wall of rock, "looking," as Private Billimore said, "as though 'e'd 'ad a nasty messy accident with the red paint."
Vicary opened his eyes as he entered the camp feet foremost.
"Warrington, V.C.," he said, and tried to cheer. But the others did it for him.