Just as we had finished watering and feeding, we saw a tank lumbering homewards round the point of the wood through the dusk. I galloped out to meet it. The officer in charge halted and put his head out on seeing me approaching.
“Hulloa, old bean,” he laughed, “what are you doing up here all on your wild lone? You know there’s nobody in front.”
I explained matters and asked if he had seen anyone like Tubby.
“A little fat chap with his arm in a sling?” he asked. “Yes, I saw him. I shouted to him and tried to stop him, but all he did was to ask me a silly question about my father. I don’t think he was all there. He rode on towards the village from which I was escaping. It was empty when first I entered, so I waddled about for half an hour mucking things up. By that time the Huns had found out that we weren’t following and they were coming back. So I skedaddled. If I were you I wouldn’t go and look for your friend—Hulloa, what’s that? You’d better duck!”
That was a burst of bullets, coming from a clump of trees to the left. The chap was right; the enemy was sneaking back.
I wheeled the guns about and went off at the trot to a little copse in which I had arranged with the infantry colonel to take up my position for the night. It was pitchy black when we arrived; the place stank of blood. It was already occupied by sleeping men; they did not speak to us, but we tripped over them in the darkness and felt them beside us when we lay down.
Having unlimbered our guns and got them on for line, we ran a wire up front to the colonel so as to keep in touch and open fire on the second if required. We divided our men into watches; they were wearied out, for it was many nights since they had slept. They lay down with all their equipment on, so as to lose no time in the event of an alarm. The girths of the saddles were loosened, but none of the harness was removed from the horses’ backs. If the enemy broke through, the first news we were likely to get would be when they were upon us. Our lives and those of the infantry might depend upon our promptitude of action.
It was just before dawn that Tubby’s horse rejoined us riderless. There was blood on the saddle and the reins were broken as though the little beast had wrenched itself free by jumping back from the thing to which it had been tied. It was a broncho trick it had, which was well known to all the battery. When in our lines it was never fastened, but allowed to stand. The broken lines proved that it had been in strangers’ hands; Tubby would never have tied it. When the men asked it what had happened to its master, it looked at them with quivering nostrils and frightened eyes and then, turning its intelligent head, gazed back ever the way that it had come.
With the first of the daylight we discovered why it was that the men with whom we had shared the wood had been so very silent—why they had not spoken when we had tripped over them, or been disturbed when we had lain down beside them.
Sticking out of the pocket of one of them was a London daily of fairly recent date. I picked it up in mere curiosity and glanced through its pages. Then suddenly, for fear anyone should want to borrow it, I hid it; away in my tunic. It contained an extraordinary story, affecting the honour of a man I loved well—an account of the police-court proceedings in the case of Mrs. Percy Dragott.