“Is that you, Algy?”
“Right—first go,” he got out. “I’m a washout—to get—pipped—bang off—like this!”
She was supporting his head with her arm, and Orace was hovering ineffectually around.
“How did they get you?” she asked. “Is it bad?”
“Think I’ll pull—round—in a sec.,” he muttered with an effort. “I’m not going to die—by a fluke.”
At this news Orace, finding that he had not to play odd man out at a deathbed scene, moved the girl aside and picked Algy up. He carried him round behind the hut and then switched the torch on him. Blood was running down the side of Algy’s face from an ugly furrow which was scored from the outside end of his eyebrow to the top of his ear, and there was a black cordite burn on his temple.
“Point-blank,” he said. “It stunned me. But I’ll soon be as fit as a fiddle.”
Orace had found a bucket, and in this he fetched water from the sea. Algy heaved himself and plunged his head in the pail for three or four long douches, coming up for breath in between. The salt water stung his wound painfully, but his head was rapidly clearing.
While they tied a handkerchief round his head he told the story, and it was much as the girl had surmised.
“So, like a little hero,” he concluded ruefully, “I walked up and said ‘Hands up!’ in the approved manner. And then I got this.”