“Poor old Ingle!” was about his last clear thought; “they’ve killed him, and now they’re firing till they’ve quite frightened me! Oh, how they keep on shooting! Get it over, you cowardly brutes—nearly a score of you against two! Oh!” he groaned then: “if I could only have delivered my despatch!”
His left hand was raised painfully to his breast to feel whether the paper was still safe; but the pain of the effort was sickening, and his hand glided over something wet and warm and sticky.
“Poor old Ingle! Blood!” flashed through his brain, as the rifle reports rang out from very close now, and then all was blank.
The end of everything seemed to have come.
Chapter Thirty Eight.
The Surgeon’s Words.
“Bad enough, poor fellow; but I think I can pull them both round. Nothing vital, you see, touched, and these Mauser bullets make wonderfully clean wounds!”
“And the other?”