My one fear at this time was to be left behind and taken prisoner, and the one hope, a very forlorn one, was that the battalion stretcher-bearers would be able to carry me away. But I heard some one in the dark say that there were no stretchers, and that orders had come to retire and leave all wounded.
There was shuffling about of men and whispered orders, then the not very distant tramp of marching along the road, a sound which grew fainter and fainter, till all in the night was silent: the battalion had gone.
After an indeterminate time—perhaps half an hour, perhaps an hour—I opened my eyes. I was not alone. Two kilted forms, indistinct and vaguely familiar, were seated on the ground close beside my head.
"Who are you?" I said, "and what are you doing here?"
"Macartney and Sinclair," replied the voice.
Macartney was the soldier who had acted as servant for me since leaving Plymouth, but the name of Sinclair was not familiar. "Who is Sinclair?" I asked; and I remember the words of his reply: "The soldier, sir, who looked after you in the trench."
Each effort of speech and thought resulted in a short period of unconsciousness.
When I next recovered there was the sound on the road of marching men. Sinclair went off to find out who they were, and ask (vain and foolish hope it now seems) if they had stretchers or an ambulance!
He came back to say that two companies of the Royal Scots were marching down the road; they had no stretcher-bearers; the Major in command of the party, when he heard that Sinclair and Macartney remained behind, ordered them to rejoin their battalion. This the two soldiers at first refused to do, and only left on receiving a direct order from me. Sinclair went off first. Macartney stopped behind a moment to speak. "Have you any last message to send back to your family?" was what he said. But to this question I distinctly remember answering "No"; and also saying, or perhaps only thinking, that I would be my own messenger home to Scotland.
Macartney also disappeared into the night, and this time I was really alone.