Then he felt better and, half raising himself on his left hand, saw another line emerge from the scrub and charge. . . . Baluchis and Gurkhas, friends . . . thank God!! And there was Augustus. He’d pass him as, just now, he had passed Terence Brannigan and the two other Baluchi subalterns. Would Augustus feel sick at the sight of him, as he had done? . . .
With a wild yell, the big Baluchis and little Gurkhas charged, and the line was borne back toward the machine-gunners, who disappeared with wonderful dispatch, in search of a desirable and eligible pitch, preferably on a flank, for their next musical performance.
“Hullo, Priceless Old Thing, stopped one?” asked Augustus, pausing in his rush.
“Bit chipped,” Bertram managed to say.
“Oh, poignant! Search—” began Augustus . . . and fell across Bertram, causing him horrible agony, a bullet-hole the size of a marble in his forehead, the back of his head blown completely out.
Bertram fainted as his friend’s brains oozed and spread across his chest.
Having dodged and manœuvred to a flank position, one of the machine-gunners played a solo to the wounded while waiting a more favourable moment and target. His fellow sons of kultur wanted no wounded German askaris on their hands, and of course the wounded Sepoys and British were better dead. Dead men don’t recover and fight again. . . . So he did a little neat spraying of twitching, writhing, crawling, wriggling or staggering individuals and groups. Incidentally he hit the two British officers again, riddling the body which was on top of the other, putting one bullet through the left arm of the underneath one. . . . Then he had to scurry off again, as the fighting-line was getting so far towards his left that he might be cut off. . . . Anyhow he’d had a very good morning and felt sure his “good old German God” must be feeling quite pleased about it.
CHAPTER IV
Baked
§1
When he recovered consciousness, Bertram found himself lying on a stretcher in a little natural clearing in the bush—a tiny square enclosed by acacia, sisal, and mimosa scrub. On a candelabra tree hung a bunch of water-bottles, a helmet, some haversacks, a tunic, and strips of white rag.