22 
LAND & WATER 
November 9, 1916 
(Continued from page 20) 
eyes, that cling most fiercely to life. They have not the joy of 
lieing alive which is a kind of earnest of immortality. • • 
1 know that my thoughts were chiefly about the )olly things 
that I had seen and done ; not regret, but gratitude. Tne 
panorama of blue moons on the veld unrolled itself before 
me. and hunters' nights in the bush, the taste of food and 
sleep, the bitter stimulus of dawn, the joy of wild ailventure, 
the voices of old staunch friends. Hitiicrto the war had 
seemed to make a break with all that had gone before, but 
now the war was only part of the piciure. i thouglit ol my 
battalion, and the good fellows there, many of wiiom had 
iellen on the' Loos parapets. I luul never looked to come 
out of that myself. But I had been s[)ared, and given the 
chance of a greater business, and I liad succeeded. That was 
the tremendous fact, and my mood was humble gratitude to 
God and exultant pride. Death was a small price to pay for 
it. As Blenkiron would have "said, I had got gco I value 
in the deal ■* 
The rii;j;lit was getting bitter cold, as happens before dawn. 
It was fro^t again, ana tlie sharpness of it woke our hunger. 
I got out the remnants of the food and wine and we had a 
last meal. I remember we pledged each other as we drank. 
" We have eaten our Pa-ssovcr i-'east," said Sandy. " When 
do you look for the end ? 
" .After dawn," 1 said. " Stumm wants daylight to get 
the full savour of his revenge." 
Slowly the sky passed from ebony to grey, and olack shapes 
of iiill outhned themselves against it. A wind blew down the 
valley, bringing the acrid smell of burning, but something 
too of the freshness of morn. It stirred strange thoughts in 
me, and woke. the old morning vigour of the blood whicli 
w;is never to be mine again. For the first time in that long 
vigil I was torn with a sudden regret. 
" We must get into the cave before it is full light," I 
said, " We Jiad better draw lots for the two to go." 
Tne choice fell on one of the Companions and Blenkiron. 
" You can count me out," said the latter. " If it's your 
wish to find a man to be ahve wiien our friends come up to 
count their spoil, I guess I'm the worst of the lot. I'd prefer 
if you don't mind, to staj' here. I've made my peace with 
my Maker, and I'd like to wait quietly on His call. I'll 
play a game of Patience to jiass the time. 
He would take no denial, so we drew again, and the lot 
fell to Sandy. 
" If I'm the last to go," he said, " I prcmiise I don't miss. 
Stumm won't be long in following me." 
He shook hands with his cheery smile, and he and the Com- 
panion slipped over the parapet in the final shadows before 
dawn. 
Blenkiron spread his Patience cards on a flat rock, and 
dealt out for the Double Napoleon. He was perfectly calm, 
and hummed to himself his only tunc. For myself I was 
drinking in the last draught of the hill air. My contentment 
was going. I suddenly felt bitterly loth to die. 
Something of the same kind must have passed through 
Blenkiron's head. He suddenly looked up and asked : 
" Sister Ann, Sister Ann, do you see anybody coming ? 
I stood close to the parapet, watching every detail of the 
landscape as shown by the revealing daybreak. Up on the 
shoulders of the Palantuken, snowdrifts lipped over the edges 
of the cliffs. I wondered when they would come down as 
avalanches. There was a kind of croft on one hillside, and 
from a hut the smoke of breakfast was beginning to curl. 
Stumm's gunners were awake and apparently holding council. 
Far down on the main road a convoy was moving — I heard 
the creak of the wheels two miles away, for the air was still. 
Then, as if a spring had been loosed, the world suddenly 
leaped to a hideous life. With a growl the guns opened 
rounri all the horizon. They were especially fierce to the 
south, where a rafale beat as I had never heard it before. 
The one glance I cast behind me showed the gap in the hills 
choked with fumes and dust. 
But my eyes were on the north. From Erzerum city tall 
tongues of flame leaped from a dozen quarters. Beyond, 
toward the opening of the Euphrates glen, there was the 
sharp crack of field-guns. I strained eyes and ears, mad 
with impatience, and I read the riddle. 
" Sandy," 1 yelled, " Peter has got through. The Russians 
are roimd the flank. The town is burning. Glory to God, 
we've won, we've won ! 
And as I spoke the earth seemed to split beside me, and 
I was flung forward on the gravel which covered Hilda \on 
Einem's grave. 
As 1 picked myself up, and to my amazement found myself 
uninjured, I saw Blenkiron rubbing the dust out of his eyes 
and arranging a disordered card. He had stopped humming, 
and was singing aloud : 
" He captured Harper's Ferry, with his nineU-en men so true 
And he frightened old Virginny. . . . " 
" Say, Major," he cried, " I believe this game of mine is 
coming out." 
I was now pretty well mad. The thought that old Peter 
had won, that uc had won beyond our wildest dreams, that 
if we died there were those coming who would exact the utter- 
most vengeance, rode my brain like a fever. I sprang on 
the p.irapet and waved my hand to Stumm, shouting defiance. 
Rifle shots cracked out from behind, and I leaped back just 
in time for the next shell. 
The charge must have been short, for it was a bad miss, 
landing somewhere on the glacis. The next was better and 
crashed on the near parapet, carving a great hole in the rocky 
kranz. This time my arm hung limp, broken by a fragment 
of stofte, but I felt no ])ain. Blenkiron seemed to bear a 
fharmed lift, for he was smothered in dust, but unhurt. He 
blew the dust away from his cards very gingerly and went on 
playing. 
" Sister Anne," he asked, " d'you see anybody coming ? 
Then came a dud which drojip.'d neatly inside on the soil 
ground. I was determined to break for the open and chance 
the rifle fire, for if Stumm went on shooting the ca'Arol was 
certain death. I caught Blenkiron round the middle, scatter- 
ing his cards to the winds, and jumpo-d over the parapet. 
" Don't apologise. Sister Anne," said he. " The game 
was as good as won. But for God's sake drop me, for if you 
wave me like the banner of freedom I'll get plugged sure and 
good." 
My one thought was to get cover for the next minutes, 
for i had an instinct that our vigil was near its end. The 
defences of Erzerum were crumbling like sand-castles, and 
it was proof of the tenseness of my nerves that I seeemd to 
he deaf to the sound. Stumm had seen us cross the parapet, 
and he started to sprinkle all the surroundings of the ca-t'ol. 
Blenkiron and I lay like a working-party between the lines 
caught by machine-guns, taking a pull on ourselves as best 
we could. Sandy had some kind of cover, but we were on 
the bare farther slojie, and tlie riflemen on that side might have 
had us at their mercy. 
But no shots came from them. .\s I looked east, the hill 
side, which a little before had been held by our enemies, was 
as empty as the desert. And then I saw on the main road a 
sight which Jor a second time made me yell like a maniac. 
Down that glen came a throng of men and gaUoping limbers 
— a crazy, jostling crowd, spreading away bej'ond the road 
to the steep slopes, and leaving behind it many black dots 
to darken the snows. The gates "M the South had yielded, 
and our friends were through them. 
At that sight I forgot all about our danger. I didn t give 
a cent for Stumm's shells. I didn't believe he could hit me. 
The fate which had mercifully ])rescrved us for the lirst taste 
of victory would see us through to the end. 
I remember bundhng Blenkiron along the hill to liml 
Sandy. But pur news was anticijjated. For down our 
own side-glen came the same broken tumult of men. More ; 
for at their backs, far up at the throat of the pa-s, I saw 
horsemen — the horsemen of the pursuit. Old Nicholas h.^.l 
flung his cavalrv in. 
Sandy was on his feet, with his lips set and his eye abstracted. 
If his face hadn't been burned black by weather it would 
have been pale as a dish-clout. A man like him doesn't make 
up his mind for death and then be given his life again without 
being wrenched out of his bearings. I thought he didn't 
understand what had happened, so I beat him on the shoulders. 
" Man, d'you see ? " 1 cried. " The Cossacks ! The 
Cossacks ! God ! how they're taking that slope 1 They're 
into them now. By Heaven, we'll ride with them. 'We'll 
get the gun horses ! 
A little knoll prevented Stumm and his men from seeing 
what was happening farther up the glen, till the first wave 
of the rout was on them. He had gone on bombarding the 
castful and its environs while the worlfl was cracking over his 
head. The gun team was in the hollow below the road, and 
down the hill among the boulders we crawled, Blenkiron as 
lame as a duck, and me with a limp left arm. 
The poor beasts were straining at their pickets and sniffing 
at the morning wind which brought down the thick fum-s of 
the great bombardment and the indescribable babbling cries 
of a beaten army. Before we reached them that maddened 
horde had swept down on them, men panting and gasping in 
their flight, many of them bloody from wounds, many totter- 
ing in the first stages of collap.se and death. I saw the horses 
seized by a dozen hands, and a dcsjjeratc fight for their posses- 
sion. But as we halted there our eyes were fixed on the 
battery on the road above us, for round it was now sweeping 
the van of the retreat. 
I had never seen a rout before, when strong men come U> 
the end of their tether and only their broken shadows stumble 
towards the refuge they never (ind. No more had Stumm. 
'.Coi.tinue.i on paqe z\) 
