Reluctantly, Sergeant Yates disappeared and Archie was left in the dark with his disabled gun and his dead and dying men. His side hurt him, and his heart ached for his companions. He calculated and re-calculated how soon help could come, till, as the long hours passed, doubt became certainty that his message had miscarried.
He could hardly guess that his destiny had been crossed by the fortunes of Private Pyotr Pavlovitch of the Seventh Siberian Rifles. Pyotr had been holding remarkable hands at 'vint' that morning in the trenches before he and his battalion had been withdrawn under the cover of the British guns. He had won a shirt from Ivan Ilyitch, and ten (pre-revolution) roubles from Dmitri Kalkanov. Can it be wondered that having traversed the cheaper stages of loquacity and truculence, he now lay in deep slumber across the road?
Observe, moreover, the careful dispositions of Providence. Had he held a trump less, and won a kopeck fewer, he would have fallen a moment sooner into the ditch at the side of the road. In that case his prostrate body would not have brought, poor, tired, off-leader Dossie down in a heap, nor sent Driver Evans with a broken leg and concussion to Norah's first dressing station. Neither would the board have been set for the game which was to be played five years later on Lake Tanganyika.
Norah's hand was on her compatriot's head when his eyes opened, and her ear close to his lips that demanded feebly to continue his search for the battery. She shook her head and pointed to his leg. Driver Evans persisted and explained his persistence.
She invoked the aid of the chief doctor of the column, a celebrated French surgeon.
'I will do all I can for your compatriots, Lady Norah,' he said, 'but I'm afraid it isn't much.'
Norah's foot tapped the floor while he scribbled a note and gave it to his orderly.
'Nobody here would know where the battery is; Peter will carry this note to the brigadier. However...' he shrugged his shoulders and turned to the case he was dressing.
Norah heard him murmur to his assistant: 'A cette heure-ci le Russe sera certainement couché avec une poule quelconque. Pas moyen de l'y déranger pour une telle bagatelle que les vies de ses soldats.'
Norah bit her lip and went back to Driver Evans. How masculine it all was! Discipline and routine and inefficiency. While the surgeon shrugged his shoulders and the General slept with his woman, her men were dying.