We had yarned outside the cookhouse since the midday meal. Oxbridge was there, and Stone, and Prince; and one or two others, I think. We sat in the open on biscuit tins or stones, or whatever was handy; for the day was sunny and quite mild. There was nothing to do, and we talked on and on. The tireless musketry fire rolled from the valley head, and enemy shells still burst haphazard along the beach and over the sea. But for an hour or more headquarters had been free from such attention, and that was all that concerned us. Instead of pondering over shells, old Sam Oxbridge had grown homesick again, and was holding forth now on a theory of his own—that after six months’ active service, the Government would send home all men wanting to go. His reasoning seemed a bit faulty; but he convinced himself.
In spite of the lazy shelling, the beach was thick with the usual crowds. And the bay was full of vessels. Old Sam stood up at last, tall and with a stoop, and remarked all this with[204] unappreciative eye. I went on stirring Welsh rabbit in a mess-tin lid, all my hopes fixed on it. The fire was nearly done, and called for new wood, and the cheese was simmering. It was a toss up which would win.
Sam’s arguments had not impressed us much, but somehow or other we stopped talking, and one looked out to sea, and one cleaned his pipe, and I went on cooking. We were all sick of the business, that was the truth. Men climbed up and down the hillside, moving to their dug-outs and that sort of thing; fragile clouds passed across the sun and darkened its face a few moments; the breeze rustled over the few bushes spared by the cook’s axe: such things I saw while I knelt and watched the Welsh rabbit through critical moments. Old Sam still stared into the distance, I noticed that too, and just then a gust of wind filled my eyes with smoke, and with an oath I sprang up behind him. As my eyes cleared he turned to move away, and that instant something struck him with a hard, dull sound, and he breathed out a long-drawn “Oh!” and threw his hands forward and fell upon the ground. He got up again and fell down once more. A shell had burst along the hill.
The doctor, who saw it happen, ran up, and we carried Sam under shelter of the cookhouse and laid him on his back. His eyes were shut, and his breathing was loud and difficult, and already he was turning a horrid grey. The Red Cross orderlies joined us.
We, who could not help, drew back out of the[205] way under the shelter of the cookhouse walls. The doctor leaned forward and pulled up Sam’s shirt, baring his chest. Below the heart was a small red mark. A second shell burst upon the hill, and a third farther along. They were ranging for us again.
None of us said a word, and only one man moved: the doctor was taking a syringe from its case. First he held it against the light, and next pushed it into the dying man’s arm.
A fresh burst of fire swept the hillside, and each man looked to himself wondering if he were next. Shells began to fall about us. They began to fall fast and to burst close around us. Soon I was looking at the sea through a wall of red dust. We huddled back against the cookhouse, and Stone’s heart went thump, t............