Patience Wins: War in the Works

by George Manville Fenn

Uncle Dick had had a fall, but I would not believe it had been serious. Perhaps he had only slipped down some long slope.

I crouched there in the darkness, straining my eyes to try and pierce the mist, and at last, unable to restrain my impatience, I began to crawl slowly on hands and knees in the direction whence my uncle’s voice seemed to come.

I crept a yard at a time very carefully, feeling round with my hands before I ventured to move, and satisfying myself that the ground was solid all around.

It seemed so easy, and it was so impossible that I could come to any harm this way, that I grew more confident, and passing my hand over the rough shale chips that were spread around amongst the short grass, I began to wonder how my uncles could have been so timid, and not have made a brave effort to escape from our difficulty.

I kept on, growing more and more confident each moment in spite of the thick darkness that surrounded me, for it seemed so much easier than crouching there doing nothing for myself. But I went very cautiously, for I found I was on a steep slope, and that very little would have been required to send me sliding down.

Creep, creep, creep, a yard in two or three minutes, but still I was progressing somewhere, and even at this rate I thought that I could join either of my companions when I chose.

I had made up my mind to go a few yards further and then speak, feeling sure that I should be close to Uncle Bob, and that then we could go on together and find Uncle Jack.

I had just come to this conclusion, and was thrusting out my right hand again, when, as I tried to set it down, there was nothing there.

I drew it in sharply and set it down close to the other as I knelt, and then passed it slowly from me over the loose scraps of slaty stone to find it touch the edge of a bank that seemed to have been cut off perpendicularly, and on passing my hand over, it touched first soft turf and earth and then scrappy loose fragments of shale.

This did not startle me, for it appeared to be only a little depression in the ground, but thrusting out one foot I found that go over too, so that I knew I must be parallel with the edge of the trench or crack in the earth.