But there came no answer save a faint, still smile. The man he called had passed beyond his reach.
Relief came to the beleaguered force at daybreak, and the worst incident of the campaign ended without disaster. A casualty list, published in the London papers a few days later, contained an announcement, which concerned nobody who read it, to the effect that Private Ford, of a West African Regiment, had succumbed to his wounds.
The Friend Who Stood By
"And you will come back, Jim? Promise! Promise!"
"Of course, darling—of course! There! Don't cry! Can't you see it's a chance in a thousand? I've never had such a chance before."
The sound of a woman's low sobbing was audible in the silence that followed; and a man who was leaning on the sea-wall above, started and peered downwards.
He could dimly discern two figures standing in the shadow of a great breakwater below him. More than that he could not distinguish, for it was a dark night; but he knew that the man's arms were about the girl, and that her face was hidden against him.