!Tention Part 3

"What, through a wounded boy!" said Pen angrily. "No, they are not so bad as that."

"Thank ye! I like that, private. I have often wished I was a man; but now I'm lying here, with a hole in my back, I'm rather glad that I am only a boy. Now then, catch hold of my water-bottle. It will soon be dark enough for you to get down to the river; and you mustn't lose any time. Oh, there's one thing more, though. You had better take my bugle; we mustn't let the enemy have that. I think as much of my bugle as Bony's chaps do of their eagles. You will take care of it, won't you?"

"Yes, when I carry it," said Pen quietly.

"Well, you are going to carry it now, aren't you?"

"No," said Pen quietly.

"Oh, you mean, not till you have fetched the water?"

Pen shook his head.

"What do you mean, then?"

"To do my duty, boy."

"Of course you do; but don't be so jolly fond of calling me boy. You said yourself a little while ago that you weren't much older than I am.

But, I say, you had better go now; and I suppose I oughtn't to talk, for it makes my head turn swimmy, and we are wasting time; and--oh, Gray,"

the boy groaned, "I--I can't help it. I never felt so bad as this.

There, do go now. Get the water, and if I am asleep when you come back, don't wake me so that I feel the pain again. But--but--shake hands first, and say good-bye."

The boy uttered a faint cry of agony as he tried to stretch out his hand, which only sank down helplessly by his side.

"Well, good-bye," he panted, as Pen's dropped slowly upon the quivering limb. "Well, why don't you go?"

"Because it isn't time yet," said Pen meaningly, as after a glance round he drew some of the overhanging twigs of the nearest shrub closer together, and then pa.s.sed his hand across the boy's forehead, and afterwards held his wrist.

"Thank you, doctor," said the boy, smiling. "That seems to have done me good. Now then, aren't you going?"

"No," said Pen, with a sigh.

"I say--why?"

"You know as well as I do," replied Pen.

"You mean that you won't go and leave me here alone? That's what you mean."

"Yes, Punch; you are quite right. But look here. Suppose I was lying here wounded, would you go off and leave me at night on this cold mountain-side, knowing how those brutes of wolves hang about the rear of the army? You have heard them of a night, haven't you?"

"Yes," said the boy, shudderingly drawing his breath through his tightly closed teeth. "I say, comrade, what do you want to talk like that for?"

"Because I want you to answer my question: Would you go off and leave me here alone?"

"No, I'm blessed if I would," said the boy, speaking now in a voice full of animation. "I couldn't do it, comrade, and it wouldn't be like a soldier's son."

"But I am not a soldier's son, Punch."

"No," said the boy, "and that's what our lads say. They don't like you, and they say--There, I won't tell you what."

"Yes, tell me, Punch. I should like to know."

"They say that they have not got anything else against you, only you have no business here in the ranks."

"Why do they say that?"

"Because, when they are talking about it, they say you are a gentleman and a scholard."

"But I thought I was always friendly and sociable with them."

"So you are, Private Gray," cried the boy excitedly; "and if ever I get back to the ranks alive I'll tell them you are the best comrade in the regiment, and how you wouldn't leave me in the lurch."

"And I shall make you promise, Punch, that you never say a word."

"All right," said the boy, with a faint smile, "I'll promise. I won't say a word; but," he continued, with a shudder which did not conceal his smile, "they will be sure to find it out and get to like you as much as I do now."

"What's the matter, Punch?" said Pen shortly. "Cold?"

"Head's hot as fire, so's my shoulder; but everywhere else I am like ice. And there's that swimming coming in my head again.--I don't mind.

It's all right, comrade; I shall be better soon, but just now--just now--"

The boy's voice trailed off into silence, and a few minutes later young Private Penton Gray, of his Majesty's newly raised --th Rifles, nearly all fresh bearers of the weapon which was to do so much to win the battles of the Peninsular War, prepared to keep his night-watch on the chilly mountain-side by stripping off his coatee and unrolling his carefully folded greatcoat to cover the wounded lad. And that night-watch was where he could hear the howling and answering howls of the loathsome beasts that seemed to him to say: "This way, comrades: here, and here, for men are lying wounded and slain; the watch-fires are distant, and there are none to hinder us where the banquet is spread.

Come, brothers, come!"

CHAPTER THREE.

WHERE THE WOLVES HOWL.

"Ugh!" A long, shivering shudder following upon the low, dismal howl of a wolf.

"Bah! How cold it is lying out here in this chilly wind which comes down from the mountain tops! I say, what an idiot I was to strip myself and turn my greatcoat into a counterpane! No, I won't be a humbug; that wasn't the cold. It was sheer fright--cowardice--and I should have felt just the same if I had had a blanket over me. The brutes! There is something so horrible about it. The very idea of their coming down from the mountains to follow the trail of the fighting, and hunt out the dead or the wounded who have been forgotten or have crawled somewhere for shelter."

Pen Gray lay thinking in the darkness, straining his ears the while to try and convince himself that the faint sound he heard was not a movement made by a prowling wolf scenting them out; and as he lay listening, he pictured to himself the gaunt, grisly beast creeping up to spring upon him.

"Only fancy!" he said sadly. "That wasn't the breathing of one of the beasts, only the wind again that comes sighing down from the mountains.--I wish I was more plucky."

He stretched out his hand and laid his rifle amongst the shrubs with its muzzle pointed in the direction from whence the sighing sound had come.

"I'll put an end to one of them," he muttered bitterly, "if I don't miss him in the dark. Pooh! They won't come here, or if they do I have only to jump up and the cowardly beasts will dash off at once; but it is horrid lying here in the darkness, so solitary and so strange. I wouldn't care so much if the stars would come out, but they won't to-night. To-night? Why, it must be nearly morning, for I have been lying here hours and hours. And how dark it is in this valley, with the mountains towering up on each side. I wish the day would come, but it always does seem ten times as long when you are waiting and expecting it. It is getting cold though. Seems to go right through to one's bones.--Poor boy," he continued, as he stretched out one hand and gently pa.s.sed it beneath his companion's covering. "He's warm enough. No--too hot; and I suppose that's fever from his wound. Poor chap! Such a boy too! But as brave as brave. He must be a couple of years younger than I am; but he's more of a man. Oh, I do wish it was morning, so that I could try and do something. There must be cottages somewhere-- shepherds' or goat-herds'--where as soon as the people understand that we are not French they might give me some black-bread and an onion or two."

The young soldier laughed a soft, low, mocking kind of laugh.

"Black-bread and an onion! How queer it seems! Why, there was a time when I wouldn't have touched such stuff, while now it sounds like a feast. But let's see; let's think about what I have got to do. As soon as it's daylight I must find a cottage and try to make the people understand what's the matter, and get them to help me to carry poor Punch into shelter. Another night like this would kill him. I don't know, though. I always used to think that lying down in one's wet clothes, and perhaps rain coming in the night, would give me a cold; but it doesn't. I must get him into shelter, though, somehow. Oh, if morning would only come! The black darkness makes one feel so horribly lonely.--What nonsense! I have got poor Punch here. But he has the best of it; he can sleep, and here I haven't even closed my eyes. Being hungry, I suppose.--I wonder where our lads are. Gone right off perhaps. I hope we haven't lost many. But the firing was very sharp, and I suppose the French have kept up the pursuit, and they are all miles and miles away."

At that moment there was a sharp flash with the report of a musket, and its echoes seemed to be thrown back from the steep slope across the torrent, while almost simultaneously, as Gray raised himself upon his elbow, there was another report, and another, and another, followed by more, some of which seemed distant and the others close at hand; while, as the echoes zigzagged across the valley, and the lad stretched out his hand to draw himself up into a sitting position, oddly enough that hand touched something icy, and he s.n.a.t.c.hed it back with a feeling of annoyance, for he realised that it was only the icy metal that formed his wounded companion's bugle, and he lay listening to the faint notes of another instrument calling upon the men to a.s.semble.