Front Lines. Cable Boyd

their way back to where Shirty had been left. Several times they trod over or past the bodies of men killed by their bombs, once they encountered a wounded officer kneeling with his shoulder against the trench wall and snapping a couple of shots from a magazine pistol at them as they plunged through the smoke. Rabbie stunned him with a straight and hard-flung bomb, leapt, dragging Lauchie with him, back into cover until the bomb exploded, and then ran forward again. He stooped in passing and picked up the pistol from beside the shattered body. “Might be useful,” he said, “an’ it’s a good sooveneer onyway. I promised a sooveneer tae yon French lassie back in Poppyring.”

      They found Shirty crouched back and hidden in the mouth of a broken-down dug-out, and helped him out despite his protests. “I was all right there,” he said. “You two get back as slow as you can, and keep them back all——”

      “See here, Shirty,” Rabbie broke in, “yer no in charge o’ the pairty now. Yer a casualty an’ I’m the senior—I’ve ma paybook here t’ prove it if ye want, so just haud your wheesh an’ come on.”

      He hoisted the wounded man—Shirty’s leg was broken and he had many other minor wounds—to his shoulder, and began to move back while Lauchie followed close behind, halting at each corner to cover the retreat with a short bombing encounter.

      Half-way back they met a strong support party which had been dispatched immediately after the receipt by the H.Q. signallers of a scribbled note dropped by a low-flying aeroplane. The party promptly blocked the trench, and prepared to hold it strongly until the time came again to advance, and the three bombers were all passed back to make their way to the dressing station.

      There Shirty was placed on a stretcher and made ready for the ambulance, and the other two, after their splinter cuts and several slight wounds had been bandaged, prepared to walk back.

      “So long, Shirty,” said Rabbie. “See ye again when ye come up an’ rejine.”

      “So long, chum,” said Shirty, “an’ I’m—er—I——”. And he stammered some halting phrase of thanks to them for coming back to fetch him out.

      “Havers,” said Rabbie, “I wisna goin’ t’ leave ye there tae feenish the war in a Fritz jail. An’ yer forgettin’ whit I promised ye back there when ye ordered me for they bombs—that I’d hammer yer heid aff when we came oot. I’ll just mind ye o’ that when ye jine up again.”

      “Right-o,” said Shirty happily. “I won’t let you forget it.”

      “I wunner,” said Rabbie reflectively, lighting a cigarette after Shirty had gone—“I wunner if he’ll ever be fit t’ jine again. I’d fair like t’ hae anither bit scrap wi’ him, for I never was richt satisfied wi’ yon decesion against me.”

      “He’s like t’ be Corporal or Sairgint time he comes oot again,” said Lauchie. “Promotion’s quick in they Reserve an’ Trainin’ Brigades at hame.”

      “If we’re no killed we’re like t’ be Corporals or Sairgints oorselves,” said Rabbie. “When we’re in action I’m thinkin’ promotions are quick enought oot here in the Suicide Club.”