"Why don't the stretcher bearers come out?" he moaned.
He could see the strong enemy trench from which they had made their final advance, and knew by the bustle there that active preparations were being made to hold it should the Prussians counter-attack again, which was not unlikely.
The enemy searchlights still concentrated upon it, and the barrage never ceased to boom and burst behind him with useless expenditure of shells which had already served their object.
No doubt behind that barrage the discomfited Prussian battalions were being reorganised, but young Wetherby had no thought of them, all his energies were directed to getting in as soon as possible that the doctor might ease his pain.
An unusually heavy burst of shrapnel cut up the ground round about him as he gained the crest of a bank, where three dead men lay piled one on top of the other, and, taking advantage of that gruesome cover, a Prussian officer was crouching on his face. Wetherby paused a moment as he came alongside him.
"Have you any water in your bottle, Kamerad?" said the man in excellent English.
"Yes, here you are," replied the boy, unshipping it and handing it to him; "are you badly hurt?"
The Prussian emptied the bottle before he made answer. "Both legs broken," he said; "might be worse, might be better."
The man's cynical laugh jarred on young Wetherby's finer feelings, shaken as he was by the acute agony he was suffering, and he dragged himself on again, the cold sweat standing in great beads on his forehead.
He had scarcely placed twice his own length between himself and the Prussian officer when the brute, who was shamming wounded all the time, levelled his revolver at the tortured boy, and lodged two blunt-nosed bullets in his back!