Firing died down, and the Lamp-post came sauntering along, looking bored, and sat down beside him, with his long, thin legs drawn up, resting his chin on his knees. "Those are the Plains of Troy," he said, pointing across the Straits to the belt of green pastures lying behind Kum Kali fort. "We should be able to see the ruins of Troy itself," and he got out his glasses, and looked disappointed when he failed to find them.
Bubbles watched him with amusement. "Go it, old Lampy, keep your head in the clouds, and get a bullet in it! Who wants to see your silly old Troy! let's have some grub. I'm terribly hungry."
They pulled some stale sandwiches from their haversacks, and commenced munching them contentedly.
"I'm jolly glad I'm not the Orphan—out there," said Bubbles, talking with his mouth full, and waving a half-eaten sandwich across beyond "W" beach—"pegging away in his old steam bus. I wouldn't be him for anything."
"Jolly hard luck on Rawlins to be left in the ship," added the Lamp-post.
"Hello! there's a chap badly knocked about—look—dragging himself towards us through the grass!" The Lamp-post had "spotted" him about a hundred yards away from the trench.
"Let's go and give him a hand," suggested Bubbles.
"Right oh!" said the Lamp-post, pushing his field-glasses back into their case, and together these two midshipmen stepped out of the trench and walked towards the man. Only a few stray bullets were coming along just then. "Hullo! What's up?" they asked the soldier when they reached him.
"Got me in the knee," he said—his face ghastly white—as he turned over on his back, with one leg helpless and that trouser-leg soaked in blood.
The Lamp-post knew all about "First Aid"—there were not many things he did not know something about—and the two midshipmen, kneeling down beside him, lashed his two legs together with his puttees, and began to carry him back.