"Right," said Dick. "Come on out." He turned to Capt. Scammell. "Please don't let the guns shorten for a minute or two, sir; Sill and I have to go out again."
Without waiting for an answer they whipped over the sandbags. Hiram was back in two minutes. He turned on the fire step and received something that Dick and Frank Sacobie lifted over to him. It was Dave Hammer, unconscious and breathing hoarsely, with his eyes shut, his borrowed tunic drenched with mud and blood and one of his bestarred sleeves shot away. Capt. Scammell swayed against the colonel and, for a second, put his hand to his eyes.
"Steady, lad, steady," said the colonel in a queer, cracked voice. "Keen, tell the guns to drop on their front line with all they've got—and then some."
To the whining and screeching of our shells driving low overhead and the tumultuous chorus of their exploding, passed the undismayed soul of Lieut. David Hammer of the Canadian Infantry.
Heedless of the coming and going of the shells and the quaking of the parapet, Sacobie sat on the fire step with his hands between his knees and stared fixedly at nothing; but Hiram Sill and young Dick Starkley wept without thought of concealment, and their tears washed white furrows down their blackened faces.
CHAPTER VII
PETER WRITES A LETTER
IN March, 1916, Sergt. Peter Starkley got back to his own country, bigger in the chest and an inch taller than when he had gone away. He walked a little stiffly on his right foot, it is true—but what did that matter? His letters to the people at home had, by intention, given them only a vague idea of the possible date of his arrival. They knew that he was coming, that he was well, and that his new leg was such a masterpiece of construction that he had danced on it in London on two occasions. Otherwise he was unannounced.
He went to the town of Stanley first and left his baggage in the freight shed at the siding. With his haversack on his shoulder and a stout stick in his right hand, he set out along the white and slippery road. Before he got to the bridge a two-horse sled overtook him, and the driver, an elderly man whom he did not know, invited him to climb on. Peter accepted the invitation with all the agility at his command.