When she reached them they had disentangled Gerda and the bicycle, and Barry held Gerda in his arms.  She was unconscious, and a cut in her head was bleeding, darkening her yellow hair, trickling over her colourless face.  Her right leg and her left arm lay stiff and oddly twisted.

Barry, his face drawn and tense, said “We must get her up to the path before she comes to, if possible.  It’ll hurt like hell if she’s conscious.”

They had all learnt how to help their fellow creatures in distress, and how you must bind broken limbs to splints before you move their owner so much as a yard.  The only splint available for Gerda’s right leg was her left, and they bound it tightly to this with three handkerchiefs, then tied her left arm to her side with Nan’s stockings, and used the fourth handkerchief (which was Gerda’s, and the cleanest) for her head.  She came to before the arm was finished, roused to pained consciousness by the splinting process, and lay with clenched teeth and wet forehead, breathing sharply but making no other sound.

Then Barry lifted her in his arms and the others supported her on either side, and they climbed slowly and gently up to the path, not by the sheer way of their descent but by a diagonal track that joined the path further down.

“I’m sorry, darling,” Barry said through his teeth when he jolted her.  “I’m frightfully sorry....  Only a little more now.”

They reached the path and Barry laid her down on the grass by its side, her head supported on Nan’s knee.

“Very bad, isn’t it?” said Barry gently, bending over her.

She smiled up at him, with twisted lips.

“Not so bad, really.”

“You little sportsman,” said Barry, softly and stooping, he kissed her pale cheek.

Then he stood up and spoke to Nan.

“I’m going to fetch a doctor if there’s one in Talland.  Kay must ride back and fetch the Polperro doctor, in case there isn’t.  In any case I shall bring up help and a stretcher from Talland and have her taken down.”

He picked up his bicycle and stood for a moment looking down at the face on Nan’s knee.

“You’ll look after her,” he said, quickly, and got on the bicycle and dashed down the path, showing that he too could do that fool’s trick if it served any good purpose.

Gerda, watching him, caught her breath and forgot pain in fear until, swerving round the next bend, he was out of sight.

9

Nan sat very still by the path, staring over the sea, shading Gerda’s head from the sun.  There was nothing more to be done than that; there was no water, even, to bathe the cut with.

“Nan.”

“Yes?”

“Am I much hurt?  How much hurt, do you think?”

“I don’t know how much.  I think the arm is broken.  The leg may be only sprained.  Then there’s the cut—­I daresay that isn’t very much—­but one can’t tell that.”