Archie, never communicative, told me little of his share in that disastrous campaign—disastrous, but not inglorious, if death and sacrifice can dignify. But for my story's sake, from the bald and insufficient facts he let fall, I must try to outline the last evening's fighting, that contrived the confluence of his and Norah's lives.
The scene, he said, was a gun-pit at the side of a muddy road, which led through a ransacked Galician village. Its wretched hovels had been gutted by the retiring troops, and from a window of the only two-storied house, the black-robed body of a Jew swung by the neck. A playful habit of the retreating Muscovite, designed to discourage espionage. By now the shadow of the mountain, under whose flank the village lay, mercifully obscured his features.
On the road that passed the gun-pit, bodies of men and horses lay like burst sacks to show where a direct hit had exploded the ammunition limber of Archie's second gun as the team was hooking in.
His section had been left to cover the brigade's withdrawal to a fresh position down the valley. When their unmolested retreat had been secured, his first gun, successfully extricated, had followed on down the hill.
The Austrian fire was ill-aimed, and spasmodic. The crash and dust of falling masonry at the far end of the straggling village, or spouts of black earth from the fields beyond, showed where the shells were falling. But the God of Battles decided that the moment selected by Archie to limber up his second gun should be chosen by the number 4 of an Austrian 120 mm. somewhere up the valley to insert a defective round. The shell dropped a quarter of a mile short of its fellows to score the direct hit on the limber.
When the smoke of the explosion had cleared, only Archie, his sergeant, one driver and one horse of the team were able to pick themselves up from the ground.
Archie's brain worked quicker than its wont. There were not many alternatives.
'Driver Evans,' he said, 'are you all right to ride?'
'Yessir!'
'Have a look at Dossie, and see if she will carry you.'