II.

"SHE APPLIED A CORNER TO HER EYES."

This masterpiece of sarcasm Willie kept in the lining of his tunic, and it made him mad every time he thought of it. And so the weary weeks passed by until the trooping season came, and then, much to the delight of all the men, A Company was ordered out to the North-West frontier to join the first battalion as a draft to make good the ravages caused by sickness and the enemy. As the train steamed out of the station, Willie saw Nelly Lindon waving her handkerchief to Big Bob, and as his carriage moved slowly past, she applied a corner to her eyes as if wiping away an imaginary tear, but there was a mischievous smile on her lips.

"Them's the beggars we've got to smash; look at 'em a-wasting of their ammunition, as if hevery round on it wasn't stolen from the Govermint."

"That'll make some of the boys perspirite, I'm thinking," Sergeant Thomson replied, as his eyes followed the direction of Big Bob's finger.

Half a mile or so from where the company was halted to refresh itself after its tedious semi-circular march in the early dawn, a long sloping hill, covered with stunted growth and unsteady boulders, rose gradually up to the sky-line; some little way below the summit, a ledge of rock ran parallel with the top, and it was at this ledge that Captain Trevor directed his field-glasses.

"I'll send the men up to that ledge in skirmishing order," he said to one of his lieutenants. "They'll be protected from the enemy's fire once they get there, then we can re-form and do the rest with a rush; I don't suppose it's more than a hundred and fifty yards to the summit from there. What do you think, Mason?"

"I shouldn't think so; anyway I hope not, as we've got to do it, and the general will be coming along on the far side in another couple of hours. By Jove, Trevor, we'd better hurry up," he added, as he looked at his watch. "We must clear those fellows off the summit by six o'clock, and it's nearly half-past four now. How many of them are there, do you think?"

"Only a couple of hundred, I suppose, but if we don't clear them out of that they could play the very devil with the brigade; it's a sheer drop of 200ft. into the road from where they are, and they'd be rolling those great boulders on to the fellows' heads. Company, fall in. 'Tention! You will advance in skirmishing order up to that ledge of rock. Section commanders to keep their men well in hand and to make the best use of every bit of cover. Now, remember, no target-shooting at those niggers on the sky-line! What I want you to do is to get to that ledge as quickly and with as little loss as possible. The men will widen out as far as they can, so as to offer no mark for the enemy's sharp-shooters. Section commanders, tell off your men!"

Five minutes later the company was straggling along over the broken ground in one long line, with wide gaps between the men, who were left more or less each to take care of himself and choose his own way.

"Blow me if we ain't a-going to 'ave a treat now!" Big Bob shouted to Little Willie, who was staggering along under the weight of his rifle half-a-dozen yards to Bob's left, as a bullet went whistling in between them. As the big man spoke his foot caught in a trailing creeper, and he measured his length on the ground, his rifle going off as he fell.

Immediately a young recruit on the right, hearing the report, and longing to have a shot at the enemy, brought his rifle up to the "ready," took careful aim, and fired. Nothing is so contagious as contagion. In five minutes the whole line were taking pot-shots at the black figures on the sky-line. In vain did the captain and his two lieutenants curse and threaten the men nearest them; in vain did the non-commissioned officers urge their men forward—it was impossible to do anything. The men were all over the place, some of them a hundred or more yards apart, some lying down behind boulders taking aim, others running forward a few paces, and then discharging their rifles from the cover afforded by bushes or rocks. As they gradually worked their way upwards, the tribesmen's good shooting began to take effect. First one man dropped, then another; then one of the lieutenants threw up his hands and fell forward, shot through the heart in the act of kicking a man who was having a little private nigger-shooting competition with his corporal. As the men saw their comrades fall they got more and more chary of exposing their own persons, preferring to lie low and waste ammunition on the sky-line.

Pitter-patter went the bullets on the stone-strewn hill-side, and the soldiers crawled a little closer up to their sheltering rocks and bent their heads down a few inches lower. There was not a man there whom you could have called a coward with impunity. Had they been all together—in line or column—they would have gone up the hill like a herd of buffaloes, with wild cheers and gleaming bayonets, and never given a thought to the dead and wounded. But, scattered as they were over the whole hill-side, with only now and then a comrade's white sun-helmet coming in sight, it was too much to expect of any man with a loaded magazine and clear view of the enemy that he should go on up, alone for all he knew, with the bullets singing around him.

In vain had Captain Trevor called the men nearest him a pack of white-livered curs; in vain had he referred to their parents and antecedents in terms that would have shocked and astonished his eminently respectableaunt, the Dowager-Countess of Trevordine. At last he gave it up in despair. "Lie there, you infernal idiots, and blaze your ammunition away. I'll be cursed ifIstand and score for you!" And, fuming with impotent rage, he returned his sword to its scabbard with a vicious click, placed his hands in his pockets, and continued the ascent alone.

"Just as if 'e was goin' on a Halpclimbin' hexpedition," as one of the men remarked.

"'E'll git a bloomin' 'ole knocked in his carcuse afore 'e's gone fur," Big Bob yelled to the man nearest him, as he refilled his magazine and settled his elbows preparatory to wasting more cartridges.

"ONE OF THE LIEUTENANTS THREW UP HIS HANDS AND FELL FORWARD."

How Captain Trevor ever reached the sheltering ridge which was to have been the rendezvous remains a mystery; but reach it he did without a scratch. One man alone was there to welcome him: "Weepin' Willie" furtively drew his sleeve across his mouth to try and disguise the fact that he was munching a commissariat biscuit, and stood at attention as his officer came up. It was Willie's first experience of active service, and he did not know if it was etiquette to be seen breakfasting while under fire.

"That you, Fox? D—— it, man, give me your hand! You're the only man fit to be a soldier in the whole company."

Willie blushed up to his ears with delight. At last he had retrieved himself in his hero's estimation. Almost reverently, he took the captain's outstretched palm.

"Thank ye, sir," he said. "Oi've been wishin' for this ever since ye carried my rifle that day!"

"That's all right, my man. Let's have a look at your rifle." He looked down the polished barrel. "You don't mean to tell me you haven't fired a shot yet?"

"Beggin' your pardon, sir, thin I did misunderstand yer. I thought as 'ow I 'adn't 'eard aright when I saw all the other blokes—I mean fellers, sir—a-blazin' away. But as I ain't much of a shot I thought I'd be on the safe soide, and I certingly did think as 'ow you'd told us not to shoot."

"I'll get you to repeat that in front of the whole company, Fox, if I can ever get them out of this cursed mess; it would be a lesson to them."

Five minutes passed, and still not another man had reached the rendezvous. Away down beneath them, some two, some three, and some four hundred yards away, the little white helmets could be seen from time to time as the skirmishers altered their positions.

"THAT YOU, FOX? GIVE ME YOUR HAND."

"I'm going to see what the enemy are up to," Captain Trevor said, as he clambered up the seven-foot ledge of rock that was sheltering the two men. "Perhaps those beggars down there will see me then and come up!"

"Weepin' Willie" followed in the wake of his officer, and there the two stood in full view of their own men, and a splendid mark for the enemy. Once Willie almost ducked as a bullet "ventilated" his helmet, and the next moment Captain Trevor staggered, and would have fallen had not the private caught him in his arms.

Carefully, and exerting all his strength, for Trevor was a big man, Willie lifted him over his shoulder, and began slowly to descend from the ridge; but, as he gave a last look round, he saw the tribesmen on the summit suddenly leap to their feet, and, brandishing their murderous knives, begin to rush down the incline. In an instant, Willie was up on the ledge again, and with the full force of his lungs—and his lungs were the only big thing about him—he shouted to his comrades below: "Run, yer blazing beggars, run! They're on yer!" And then, with all the speed his feeble legs would allow, he clambered off the ridge and began to stagger down the hill, the captain's long legs trailing on the ground behind, scraping against the loose stones and starting them rolling. On the little man stumbled, his knees giving under his heavy burden, his breath coming in short sobs, and his heart beating like a steam-hammer. What if he failed to save his hero!

Suddenly he became aware of a big man in "khaki" towering above him. "Here, lad, give 'im to me!" and a pair of strong arms lifted the captain easily, as Willie recognised Big Bob's voice. A cheer went up from below as Lieutenant Mason and a dozen men with gleaming bayonets came dashing up the slope. The tribesmen, who were just coming over the ridge above, saw the little band, saw the fierce, determined look on their faces, the blood-for-blood battle-lust in their eyes. "Illah Allah," shouted the chief, "these are no coward-women after all!" and discharging his rifle haphazard, scrambled down the ledge the way he had come. In less time than it takes to tell, the dusky warriors were laboriously following their chief to the summit again, closely pursued by the Englishmen, while all along the slope white helmets and bright steel flashed in the rising sunlight, as one after another the men leaped to their feet and rushed upwards. In five minutes the struggle was over, and just as the dusty, blood-stained men were opening their haversacks to snatch a hurried breakfast, a troop of the Guides cavalry, the advance guard of the brigade, came clattering along the mountain road two hundred feet beneath them.

It was a proud day for A Company when all the Fingal Valley Brigade were paraded in hollow square to see private Fox receive the Victoria Cross, and no man cheered louder than Big Bob.

"'Weepin' Willie' yer is, and 'Weepin' Willie' yer'll remain," he afterwards said to the hero of the day, as all his comrades gathered round to shake his hand. "I'd weep the 'ole bloomin' day if I thought it'dmake me behave as well as yer did under fire, 'ang me tight if I wouldn't!"

"Aye! And if yer hasks my opination, 'e was weepin' cos 'is messmates was such a bloomin' lot of coward, low-'earted skunks! And so we are—compared with 'im, leastwise—ain't we, mateys?"

"Yes, yes. Rayther!" was shouted on all sides.

"ON THE LITTLE MAN STUMBLED."

Then someone got on a commissariat biscuit-box: "Three cheers for 'Weepin' Willie,' our little nipper, the bravest man in all the bloomin' brigade!" And the galvanized iron roof fairly rattled an accompaniment to the lusty lungs of A Company.

The day after the 1st Battalion of Her Majesty's 210th Line—late of the Fingal Valley Field Force—was landed at Plymouth, Nellie Lindon received a registered envelope which contained many things. One was a dirty scrap of paper with a few words in pencil on it, that had been carried all through a campaign concealed in the lining of a private's tunic. Then there was a plain gun-metal Maltese cross with the words "For Valour" graven thereon; and, lastly, a line or two from Big Bob: "Take my advice, Nell," he wrote, "and have the nipper."

And Nell did.

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