That was Bill Thompson! Bill was groaning for help. Oh, dear!
Up he crawled, seeking the place of the groans.
“Hello! Where are you?” he asked, cautiously. He was almost into the fire-light.
“’Ere. Who are you?”
“Terry Richards. I’m coming.”
He kept crawling, and pretty soon he found Bill lying flat on his side, with his head on his arm. In the faint glimmer of the flames a ghastly thing he was.
“You bad hurt, Bill?”
“’Ello. They shot me through the h’arm an’ knifed me in the neck an’ scalped me, but I got the scalp.”
“What?”
“Yes. ’Ere ’tis, in my ’and. The bloomin’ beggar didn’t ’ang onto h’it. ’E dropped h’it. H’I saw ’im. Felt like the ’ole top o’ my ’ead was h’off, but I got h’it when they wasn’t lookin’. D’ you think h’it’ll grow on me again?”