The bullets fell thicker and faster now, the rattle of the guns at the German trench had increased and no man could steal out from the pit and hope to survive. Perhaps Roy could drag himself out again and up the slope in time to keep his friend from attempting——
The boy struggled to get his arms fully under him and then to sustain the weight of head and shoulders. But the former effort had been too great; the reaction now was final. He sank back on the soggy ground and the hem of his blouse stretched across the wound, his weight firmly holding it. This and the coagulating effect of the cold earth must have stopped the flow. But the lad lay white and still, no longer gazing up at the black sky, nor conscious of his hurt, nor the curtain of lead and iron above and about him.
"Flynn? Where is he?" was Herbert's first question of the men who had leaped into the welcome shelter of the pit.
Watson glanced around. "He was with me; yelled to me. Must have been hit! I was; my heel's off, and one hit my pocket fair. And there's what's-his-name, wounded, though he got in. Flynn must have been hurt bad, or he'd made it!"
One of the Regulars limped away to his couch, a bullet had cut his side and broken a rib, but this was a minor matter. The other man who had been out on the slope had lost his hat; a shot had struck his gun also. A barrage fire is truly a curtain of missiles, a shower of bullets that, like rain, reaches in time every spot in the area against which it is directed.
"You musn't go out, Corporal! My orders, please! You couldn't live to reach Flynn now, and he may be dead or out of harm's way in some shelter."
"But, Lieutenant, think of it! He may be suffering, dying out there, unable to help himself, bleeding to death! If I could only try to reach——"
"No! A thousand times no! You are too useful here; have done too much of value already to run a risk of that kind. Just wait a bit until our fellows down there in their trench start a fusillade. I wish Letty could get at his gun and perhaps he can."
And Letty did. The telescopic-looking weapon stood on a revolving iron base at such a height as to be within zone of the enemy's fire when the gun was being used; and though it took but an instant to elevate, aim and shoot with accuracy under ordinary conditions, it now was likely to be pelted thoroughly by the barrage. So Corporal Letty called on his men to sand-bag the gun clearance space, standing by to pull bags away where he would indicate it; this gave him a chance, after he had timed his fuse, to slip in a shell, elevate and let her go straight at the line of barrage guns.
"There goes Susan Nipper at last!" exclaimed Smith, who was a reader of Dickens and had named the big gun after a noted character in "Dombey and Son," which name stuck.