The marksman, having got rid of an imaginary speck of rust that had troubled his soul, replaced the bolt, and was putting away the oil rag, when there was a sharp stifled gasp, followed by a slithering fall, and Captain Dashwood lay in a heap among the white wet mud at the bottom of the trench. His cap had spun round and dropped into a sump, and the blood was pouring down his face and neck as Hawke reached him.
"'Strewth, he's dead, and it's my fault!" he moaned, as a sergeant and several other men ran up.
"It was nobody's fault but his own," said the sergeant savagely. "I've warned him a dozen times—and he's not dead, either. Pass the word there. We must get him down to the aid post sharp."
While Hawke supported the battered head upon his knee the sergeant hastily applied a field dressing, and when a couple of bearers came running along the communication trench they laid the wounded man carefully on the stretcher, Hawke watching the receding figures with a dazed look until the angle hid them from view.
"Now, you rotter, I've got to get you set!" he muttered, bending down and peering into the periscope with his rifle gripped tightly in his hands.
Two or three days later news came up that the captain, still unconscious, had been sent to London straightway from the base hospital, and then for several weeks they heard no more of him, and a fresh notch cut on the stock of the Mark III. gave Private Harry Hawke very little satisfaction.
"If I hadn't told him that all was clear he'd never have shoved his 'ead over the blinkin' sandbags," he kept muttering to himself. "Home ain't like home without a mother, and I reckon 'e was father and mother to us all art 'ere. Wish I was dead—I'm fed up!"
"By Jove, mater, this is good news indeed. Fancy Dennis being gazetted to our battalion after all!" and Captain Bob's face lit up as he looked across the breakfast table with the telegram that had just arrived in his hand. "Only got a week's kit leave too, which means that he's to join at once. I'll put him through his facings and show him just what to get and what not to get, and if the Medical Board will only pass me fit for service again we can go over together. He will be here this morning too!"
A chorus of delight went up from the four youngsters on one side of the table, and Master Billy Dashwood, aged eight, clapped his hands and overturned the milk jug.