“We must save those guns and hold that hill. They call us tar heels. Let us show how tar sticks.”
Instantly, and with a yell that might have come from the throats of so many demons, the brigade of about two thousand men bent their heads forward, rushed up the hill, and swarmed around Kilgariff’s guns. Their deployment into line quickly diverted the enemy’s attention to a larger front. Other guns were hurriedly brought up to the hill, and half an hour later a substantial line of earthworks covered its crest.
The three minutes that Kilgariff had allowed for the complete destruction of his little command were scarcely gone when this relief came. He was ordered to withdraw his remaining gun by hand down the hill—by hand, for the reason that not a horse remained of the thirty odd that had so lately galloped up the steep.
VII
WITH EVELYN AT WYANOKE
AS if bearing a charmed life, Kilgariff had gone through all this without a scratch. He had galloped up that hill in the face of a heavy infantry fire; he had planted his section under the murderous cannonading of twenty well-served guns firing at point-blank range; he had fought his pieces under a bombardment so fierce that within the brief space of three minutes his command was well-nigh destroyed. Yet not a scratch of bullet or shell-fragment had so much as rent his uniform.
By one of those grim jests of which war is full, he fell after all this was over, his neck pierced and torn by a stray bullet that had missed its intended billet in front and sped on in search of some human target in the rear.
He was carried immediately to one of the field-hospitals which Doctor Arthur Brent was hurriedly establishing just in rear of the newly formed line of defence. There he fell into Doctor Brent’s own friendly hands; for that officer, the moment he saw who the patient was, left his work of supervision and himself knelt over the senseless form of the sergeant-major to discover the extent of his injury and to repair it if possible. He found it to be severe, but not necessarily fatal. He proceeded to stop the dangerous hemorrhage, cleansed and dressed the wound, and within half an hour Kilgariff regained consciousness.