I lay very still for a long time and then crept slowly back to my thorn-bush.
I tried the right flank, but with the same effect. And now he began shooting through my thorn-bush on the chance of hitting me.
Behind me was a dense undergrowth of thorn, wild-rose bramble, thistle, willow and sage.
I turned about and crawled through this tangle, until at last I came out, scratched and dishevelled and sweating, into the old water-course.
The firing-line was only a few hundred yards away, and the bullets from a Turkish maxim went wailing over my head, dropping far over by the Engineers whom I had passed.
I wanted to find those wounded, and I wanted to get past that open space, and I wanted above all to dodge that sniper. The old scouting instincts of the primitive man came calling me to try my skill against the skill of the Turk. I sat there wiping away blood from the scratches and sweat from my forehead and trying to think of a way through.
I looked at the mountains on my left—the lower ridge of the Kapanja Sirt—and saw how the water-course went up and up and in and out, and I thought if I kept low and crawled round in this ditch I should come out at last close behind the firing-line, and then I could get in touch with the trenches. I could hear the machine-gun of the M—'s rattling and spitting.
I began crawling along the water-course. I had only gone three yards or so, and turned a bend, when I came suddenly upon two wounded men. Both quite young—one merely a boy. He had a bad shrapnel wound through his boot, crushing the toes of his right foot. The other lay groaning upon his back—with a very bad shrapnel wound in his left arm. The arm was broken.
The boy sat up and grinned when he saw me.
“What's up?” asked his pal.