XXIX
He awakened from that lost moment of enthralment to the pang and the shock of self-discovery, and to the knowledge that somebody was hailing him by name from the top of the ladder.
"Saxham! Doctor! Are you below there?"
It was the gay, fresh voice of Beauvayse, halted with a handful of Irregulars, bandoliered, carrying their rifles and the day's provisions, wearing their bayonets on their hips, and sitting their wiry little horses with the ease of old troopers in the lee-side of the piled-up mound of sandbags that roofed the underground convent. Five men and a Corporal of the Town Guard, similarly burdened and accoutred—we know the pale Cockney eyes and the thin face of the Corporal, whose freckles have long ago vanished in a uniform gingerbread hue—had also taken momentary shelter from one of the intermittent blizzards of Mauser bullets that drifted through Gueldersdorp.
One Irregular was sitting on an earth-filled packing-case, swearing softly, nursing a disabled right arm, and looking at the corded network of hairy, sunburned muscles that were delicately outlined in the bright red stream that trickled from beneath the rolled-up shirt-sleeve of raspy "greyback."
"We saw your hairy tied up outside, Doctor, and 'sensed' your whereabouts, as McFadyen says. Can the ladies spare you for a moment? Sorry to be a nuisance, but one of my fellows has got winged on our way to relieve the garrison at Maxim Outpost South, and though he swears he is as fit as a fiddle, I don't believe he ought to come on."
"I'm all right, Sir, 'pon me Sam I am!" protested the dismounted trooper. "It's a bit stiff, but the bleedin' 'll take that off. I shan't shoot a tikkie the worse for it. Lay anybody 'ere a caulker I don't!"
Nobody took up the bet, fortunately for the sportsman, as surgical examination proved that the bullet had gone sheer through the fleshy part of the upper arm, breaking the bone, just missing the artery, and leaving a clean hole.
"You'll have to go to Hospital, my man," pronounced Saxham.
The face of the wounded Irregular lengthened in disgust. "My crimson luck! And I'd made up my mind to pick off a brace o' them blasted Dutch wart 'ogs over that there bad job of pore Bob Ellis."