Then he awoke to the horror of the thing.
His right side was dead!
The shape was really alive. It resolved itself into a man crawling in the darkness to his rescue.
"You need not bother about me, I'm done for. Get back into the trench."
He had a feeling that though he meant his lips to frame these words, he was in reality saying something quite different. It was an exhausting effort to speak.
The form asked him questions in a fierce whisper. He had not the strength to understand or answer.
Very slowly and cautiously he was dragged over the few yards of ground that separated him from the first hole.
It was awful. His brain conceived the thought: "For God's sake let me die in peace." But his lips were all twisted, and refused to move at the bidding of his brain. He could only groan.
With wonderful gentleness the man placed his Officer's broken head over the hole, and with the help of another man lowered him into it.