“How many were there?”

“Fourteen, I think.  Some of them weren’t much hurt.  They’d all be alive, if I hadn’t come out with you.”

“Who were they?  But you don’t know our names yet, do you?  You didn’t see Lieutenant Gerhardt among them?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Nor Sergeant Hicks, the fat fellow?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Where are you hurt?”

“Abdominal.  I can’t tell anything without a light.  I lost my flash light.  It never occurred to me that it could make trouble; it’s one I use at home, when the babies are sick,” the doctor murmured.

Claude tried to strike a match, with no success.  “Wait a minute, where’s your helmet?” He took off his metal hat, held it over the doctor, and managed to strike a light underneath it.  The wounded man had already loosened his trousers, and now he pulled up his bloody shirt.  His groin and abdomen were torn on the left side.  The wound, and the stretcher on which he lay, supported a mass of dark, coagulated blood that looked like a great cow’s liver.

“I guess I’ve got mine,” the Doctor murmured as the match went out.

Claude struck another.  “Oh, that can’t be!  Our fellows will be back pretty soon, and we can do something for you.”

“No use, Lieutenant.  Do you suppose you could strip a coat off one of those poor fellows?  I feel the cold terribly in my intestines.  I had a bottle of French brandy, but I suppose it’s buried.”

Claude stripped off his own coat, which was warm on the inside, and began feeling about in the mud for the brandy.  He wondered why the poor man wasn’t screaming with pain.  The firing on the hill had ceased, except for the occasional click of a Maxim, off in the rocks somewhere.  His watch said 12:10; could anything have miscarried up there?

Suddenly, voices above, a clatter of boots on the shale.  He began shouting to them.

“Coming, coming!” He knew the voice.  Gerhardt and his rifles ran down into the ravine with a bunch of prisoners.  Claude called to them to be careful.  “Don’t strike a light!  They’ve been shelling down here.”

“All right are you, Wheeler?  Where are the wounded?”

“There aren’t any but the Doctor and me.  Get us out of here quick.  I’m all right, but I can’t walk.”

They put Claude on a stretcher and sent him ahead.  Four big Germans carried him, and they were prodded to a lope by Hicks and Dell Able.  Four of their own men took up the doctor, and Gerhardt walked beside him.  In spite of their care, the motion started the blood again and tore away the clots that had formed over his wounds.  He began to vomit blood and to strangle.  The men put the stretcher down.  Gerhardt lifted the Doctor’s head.  “It’s over,” he said presently.  “Better make the best time you can.”

They picked up their load again.  “Them that are carrying him now won’t jolt him,” said Oscar, the pious Swede.