“Come on, come on!” kept reaching his ears; and then he felt dizzy and sick at heart.
It seemed to be growing dark all at once, but he set it down to the closing-in of the overshadowing trees. And then minutes passed of confusion, exertion, and a feeling as of suffocation consequent upon the difficulty of catching his breath.
Then at last—he could not tell how long after—Punch was whispering in his ear as they lay side by side so close together that the boy’s breath came hot upon his cheek.
“Oh, how slow you have been! But this ’ere will do—must do, for we can get no farther. Why, you were worse than me. Hurt yourself when you went down?”
Pen was about to reply, when a French voice shouted, “Forward! Right through the forest!”
There was the trampling of feet, the crackling of dead twigs, and Punch’s hand gripped his companion’s arm with painful force, as the two lads lay breathless, with their faces buried in the thick covering of past years’ dead leaves, till the trampling died away and the fugitives dared to raise their faces a little in the fight for breath.