24 
LAND & WATER 
October 26, 1916 
(Continued from page 22.) 
down messages in the darkness, but they have given me the 
signal which means ' Consent.' " 
" Come, that is pretty good," said Peter. " And now 
I must be moving. You take a hint from me. When you 
hear big firing up to the north get ready to beat a quick 
retreat, for it will be all up with that city of yours. And 
tell your folk, too, that they're making a bad mistake letting 
those fool Germans rule their land. Let them hang Enver and 
his little friends, and we'll all be happy once more." 
" May Satan receive his soul ! " said the Turk. " There 
is wire before us, but I will show you a way through. The guns 
this evening made many rents in it. But haste, for a working 
party may be here presently to repair it. Remembe- there 
is much wire before the other lines." 
Peter, with certain directions, found it pretty easy to make 
his way through the entanglement. There was one bit which 
scraped a hole in his back, but very soon he had come to the 
last posts and found himself in the open country. The place, 
he said, was a graveyard of the' unburied dead that smelt 
horribly as he crawled among them. He had no inducements 
to delay, for he thought he could hear behind him the move- 
ment of the Turkish working party, and was in terror that a 
flare might reveal him and a volley accompany his retreat. 
From one shell-hole to another he wormed his way, till he 
struck an old ruinous communication trench which led in 
the right direction. The Turks must have been forced back 
in tlie past week, and the Russians were now in the evacuated 
trenches The thing was half full of water, but it gave Peter 
a feeling of safety, for it enabled him to get his head below 
the level of the ground. Then it came to an end and he found 
before him a forest of wire. 
The Turk in his signal had mentioned half an hour, but 
Peter thought it was nearer two hours before he got through 
that no.xious entanglement. Shelling had made little differ- 
ence to it. The uprights were all there, and the barbed 
strands seemed to touch the ground. Remember, he had no 
wire-cutter ; nothing but his bare hands. Once again fear 
got hold of him. He felt caught in a net, with monstrous 
vultures waiting to pounce on him from above. At any 
moment a flare might go up and a dozen rifles find their mark. 
He had altogether forgotten about the message which had 
been sent, for no message could dissuade the ever-present 
death he felt around him. It was, he said, like following 
an old lion into bush when there was but one narrow way in, 
and no road out. 
The guns began again — the Turkish guns from behind the 
ridge — and a shell tore up the wire a short way before him. 
Under cover of the burst he made good a few yards, leaving 
■large portions of his clothing in the strands. Then quite 
suddenly, when hope had almost died in his heart, he felt the 
ground rise steeply. He lay very still, a star-rocket from the 
Turkish side lit up the place, and there in front was a rampart 
with the points of bayonets showing beyond it. It was the 
Russian hour for stand-to. 
He raised his cramped limbs from the ground and shouted, 
" Friend ! English ! " 
A face looked down at him, and then the darkness again 
descended. 
" Friend," he said hoarsely. " English." 
He heard speech behind the parapet. An electric torch 
was flashed on him for a second. A voice spoke, a friendly 
voice, and the sound of it seemed to be telhng him to come 
over. 
He was now standing up, and as he got his hands on the 
parapet he seemed to feel bayonets very near him. But the 
voice that spoke was kindly," so with a heave he scrambled 
over and flopped into the trench. Once more the electric 
torch was flashed and revealed to the eyes of the onlookers 
an indescribably dirty, lean, middle-aged man with a bloody 
head, and scarcely a rag of shirt on his back. The said man, 
seeing friendly faces around him, grinned cheerfully. 
" That was a rough trek, friends," he said ; " I want to 
see your general pretty quick, for I've got a present for him." 
He was taken to an officer in a dug-out, who addressed 
him in French, which he did not understand. But the sight 
of Stumm's plan worked wonders. After that he was fairly 
bundled down communication trenches and then over swampy 
lields to a farm among trees. There he found staff officers, 
who looked at him and looked at his map, and then put him 
on a horse and hurried him eastwards. At last he came to 
a big ruined house, and was t?iken into a room which seemed 
to be full of map)s and generals. 
The conclusion must be told in Peter's words. 
" There was a big man sitting at a table drinking coffee, 
and when I saw him my heart jumped out of my skm. For 
it was tke man I hunted with on the Pungwe in '98 — him 
whom the Kaffirs called ' Buck's Horn,' because of his long 
«urled moustaches. He was a prince even then, and now he 
i« a very great general. When I saw him, I ran forward and 
gripped his hand and cried, ' Hoe gat het. Mynheer ? ' and he 
knew me and shouted in Dutch, ' Damn, if it isn't old Ptter 
Pienaar ! ' Then he gave me coffee and ham and good bread, 
and he looked at my map. 
What is this ? ' he cried, growing red in the face. 
" ' It is the staff-map of one Stumm, a German sM/«»m who 
commands in yon city,' I said. 
" He looked at it close and read the markings, and then 
he read the other paper which you gave me, Dick. And then 
he flung up his arms and laughed. He took a loaf and tossed 
it into the air so that it fell on the head of another general. 
He spoke to them in their own tongue, and they too laughed 
and one or two ran out as if on some errand. I have never 
seen such merrymaking. They were clever men, and knew 
the worth of what you gave me. 
" Then he got to his feet and hugged me, all dirty as I was, 
and kissed me on both cheeks. 
Before God, Peter,' he said, ' you're the mightiest 
hunter since Nimrod. You've often found me game, but 
never game so big as this ! ' " 
CHAPTER XXI 
The Little Hill 
IT was a wise man who said that the biggest kind of 
courage was to be able to sit still. I used to feel that 
when we were getting shelled in the reserve trenches 
outside Vermelles. I felt it before we went over the 
parapets at Loos, but I never felt it so much as on the last 
two days in that cellar. I had simply to set my teeth and 
take a pull on myself. Peter had gone on a crazy errand 
which I scarcely believed could come off. There were no 
signs of Sandy ; somewhere within a hundred yards he was 
fighting his own battles, and I was tormented by the thought 
that he might get jumpy again and wreck everything. A 
strange Companion brought us food, a man who spoke only 
Turkish and could tell us nothing ; Hussin, I judged, was 
busy about the horses. If I could only have done something 
t o help on matters I could have scotched my anxiety, but 
there was nothing to be done, nothing but wait and brood. 
I tell you I began to sympathise with the general behind the 
lines in a battle, the fellow who makes the plans which others 
execute. Leading a charge can be nothing hke so nerve- 
shaking a business as sitting in an easy-chair and waitinj; 
the news of it. 
It was bitter cold, and we spent most of the day wrapped 
in our greatcoats and buried deep in the straw. Blenkiron 
was a marvel. There was no light for him to play Patience 
by, but he never complained. He slept a lot of the time, 
and when he was awake talked as cheerily as if he were 
starting out on a holiday. He had one great comfort, his 
dyspepsia was gone. He sang hymns constantly to the 
benign Providence that had squared his duo-denum. 
My only occupation was to listen for the guns. The 
first day after Peter left they were very quiet on the front 
nearest us, but in the late evening they started a terrific 
racket. The next day they never stopped from dawn to 
dusk, so that it reminded me of that tremendous forty-eight 
hours before Loos. I tried to read into this some proof that 
Peter had got through, but it would not work. It looked 
more like the opposite, for this desperate hammering must 
mean that the frontal assault was still the Russian game. 
Two or three times I climbed on the housetop for fresh air. 
The day was foggy and damp, and I could see very little of 
the countryside. Transport was still bumping southward 
along the road to the Palantuken, and the slow wagon-loads 
of wounded returning. One thing I noticed, however. 
There was a perpetual coming and going between the house 
and the city. Motors and mounted messengers were con- 
stantly arriving and departing, and I concluded that Hilda 
von Emem was getting ready for her part in the defence of 
Erzerum. 
These ascents were all on the first day after Peter's going. 
The second day, when I tried the trap, I found it closed and 
heavily weighted. This must have been done by our friends, 
and very right too. If the house were becoming a place of 
public resort, it would never do for me to be journeying 
roofward. 
Late on the second night Hussin reappeared. It was after 
supper, when Blenkiron had gone peacefully to sleep and I 
was beginning to count the hours till the morning. I could 
not close an eye during these days and not much at night. 
Hussin did not light a lantern. I heard his key in the 
lock, and then his hght step close to where we lay. 
" Are you asleep ? " he said, and when I answered he sat 
down beside me. 
" The horses are found," he said, " and the Master bids 
me tell you that we start in the morning three hours before 
dawn." 
(T« be continued) 
