"They must have started for the wrong hill, and in this mist they won't have realised their danger. That battery will be wiped out unless we can stop it." He looked round quickly. "Signallers—no—useless: and the telephone not yet through. Tony, you'll have to go. There's no direct road. Go straight across country and you may just do it."
Tony was already halfway to the horses.
"Take up Dignity's stirrups two holes," he called as he ran towards them. "Quick, man, quick!"
It took perhaps twenty seconds, which seemed like as many minutes. He flung away belt and haversack, crammed his revolver into a side pocket, and was thrown up into the saddle. "The Maud" himself opened the gate off the road.
"Like hell, Tony, like hell!"
The General's words, shouted in his ear as he passed through on to the grass, seemed echoed in the steady beat of Dignity's hoofs as he went up to his bridle and settled into his long raking stride.
Tony leant out on his horse's neck, his reins crossed jockey fashion, his knees pressed close against the light hunting saddle. Before him a faded expanse of green stretched out for two miles to the white cottage on the hillside which he had chosen as his point. The rush of wind in his ears, the thud of iron-shod hoofs on sound old turf, the thrill that is born of speed, made him forget for a moment the war, the enemy, his mission. He was back in England on a good scenting morning in November. Hounds were away on a straight-necked fox, and he had got a perfect start. Almost could he see them beside him, "close packed, eager, silent as a dream."
This was not humdrum soldiering—cold and hunger, muddy roads and dreary marches. It was Life.
"Steady, old man."
He leant back, a smile upon his lips, as a fence was flung behind them and the bottom of the valley came in sight.