Under Fire For Servia

by James Fiske

That was Dick's thought. He owed his life to this man Obrenovitch, whose very face he would not know if he saw him now. And that life, he felt, would be of no use to him if he kept it at the expense of leaving his debt of gratitude to Obrenovitch unpaid.

The Servian captain had fallen out in the open, and Dick came to him at last. The searchlight was still playing. It lit up the body for a moment, and then winked away again. But Dick had his own pocket flashlight out in a second, and in its light he saw that the captain, if he was not dead, was in a bad way. Like all scouts, Dick knew something of the first aid, and a very hasty glance showed him just what had happened. Obrenovitch lay straight out, and the blood was gushing out from his leg above the knee. One of the great arteries had been cut. In a few minutes he would bleed to death if help did not come to him.

"Oh, I hope I'm in time!" cried Dick.

And then he wasted no more of the precious seconds. He knew that Obrenovitch, as an officer, in uniform, and in time of war, would have somewhere about him a Red Cross packet containing the absolute essentials of first aid treatment. In a moment he had found this packet and torn it open. He was close to the river, and in a twinkling he found two small, flat stones. These he pressed into the open wounds where the bullet had passed in and out, and then he drew a tight bandage about them.

All this time, be it remembered, he was under heavy fire. Bullets pattered about him constantly. Once a stick he was using in an effort to improvise a still better tourniquet was shot right out of his hand. But he never faltered. Fortunately the shooting was wild. The searchlight had not picked him up, and so he was not a real target for the enemy, as he might have been had they seen him in the glare of the great light.

The blood soon ceased to flow, and then Dick leaned over to listen for the beating of the captain's heart. He caught it in a moment. It was faint, but regular enough.

"I think he'll do all right now," said Dick to himself, with intense satisfaction.

And then he had time to think of himself, and to realize that he was tired and shaky about the knees. He collapsed for a moment, and lay beside the wounded and unconscious officer. But he realized something that was like a tonic; he had not been afraid, not once, while his work remained unfinished! Perhaps it was just because he had been too busy in his fight with the death that was reaching out to seize the Servian. Whatever the reason, it was something to make him proud and happy, and to fill him with a tingling sensation that was worth a night's sleep, almost, in making him forget his own exhaustion.

"Now to get him away!" said Dick to himself. "There's no use in staying here. Something is sure to hit one or both of us if I do."

But Obrenovitch was rather a heavy man. Dick could have dragged him along, but he was afraid that that would start the bleeding of the wound afresh, and he knew that if the Servian lost even a little more of the blood that he had already shed so freely nothing could save him.