"Then one of you go and bring my brother here," said Dennis. "You go, Tiddler; and Hawke, come with me."
A great rent had been torn in the mouth of the sniper's gallery, and the sniper himself was not good to look upon, every rag of clothing having been stripped from his back and lower limbs by the bomb, while a couple of yards farther on lay the man whom Dennis had shot.
Picking his way past them, Dennis flashed his torch on again, and, followed by Hawke, made his way back into that underground storehouse, which had so nearly been his grave.
As he entered it he gave a prodigious yawn, and felt an indescribable lassitude creep over him.
"I'm frightfully tired, Hawke. I've been through a lot since we crawled over to their wire last night, and I'm hanged if I can keep up much longer. You see those steps? A spy fellow pitched me down them neck and crop. I fell just here, with a bomb in my hand too!"
"Lumme!" ejaculated his listener, as Dennis sat down heavily on the pile of blankets, just as the shell-proof door above them was opened from the other side.
Lights flashed into the lower vaults, and several officers chorused their surprise, among them Captain Bob. Tiddler had not yet reached him, and Bob was searching anxiously for some trace of his brother.
"My hat!" he cried. "We've touched lucky to-day, but Dennis can't possibly be down there. I'll go back and question No. 2 Platoon; he may have gone to the right."
"Arf a mo', sir!" sang out Harry Hawke. "'E is 'ere right enough, and bust me if he ain't snorin' already!"
Hawke, looking up the steps, saw the group part and General Dashwood himself come quickly down the ladder, and the store of shot and shell and the piles of rifles were as nothing to the brigadier as he saw the boy he thought he had lost for ever lying on the blanket pile, sleeping the sleep of physical exhaustion.