"Slow sport," soliloquised the sub. "Well, thank goodness, we're nearly to the top of Broad Tor; then we can ease our jaw-tackle. Hanged if I like being as silent as a Trappist monk."
Suddenly, two swift, brownish objects darted from the cover of a gorse-bush. Farrar had a momentary glimpse of two white tails as the animals changed course and bolted for a place of refuge—a honey-combed bank overhung with low bushes.
Mindful of Winifred's warning, he fired at forty yards. Down dropped one rabbit, kicking frantically, while the other, partly crippled, struggled towards the nearmost hole. With his gun still at the shoulder the sub fired the second barrel.
"Hurrah!" he shouted involuntarily, as the second rabbit dropped; but as he started to run to secure his prizes, he caught a brief glance of a man's head and shoulders above the bushes, one side of his face streaming with blood, ere he dropped to the ground.
"Well done!" exclaimed the A.P., who on hearing the shots was hastening towards the sub.
"Far from it," said Farrar in a low voice. "I say, keep Miss Greenwood back out of it; I've plugged some poor bounder."
"Rot!" exclaimed the A.P. incredulously.
"Fact," protested the luckless sportsman. "Be quick, man! Take her away out of it."
Leaving Greenwood to attempt the futile task the sub forced his way through the undergrowth till he came to the spot where his victim dropped. Lying face downwards on a small plot of grass was a tall, well-built man, unconscious, but breathing stertorously. A cloth cap was hung up in the bushes, having evidently been blown there by a portion of the charge of No. 6 shot. The cap had to a certain extent protected its wearer, for beyond a few slight scratches the top of his head was untouched; but from the right temple downwards to the neck the hard-hitting pellets had done their work only too well.
While Farrar was attempting to render first-aid the A.P. and his sister arrived upon the scene, Winifred insisting on giving her assistance as a member of the V.A.D.