His words rang out like
pistol-shots.
"Halt! Who goes there?"
"Friends!" we shouted, seeing the gleam of light on a shaking bayonet.
"Come close to be recognized!" he said, and his voice was harsh.
We went close, and I for one was afraid. Young sentries sometimes shot
too soon.
"Who are you?" he asked, in a more natural voice, and when we
explained he laughed gruffly. "I never saw two strangers pass this way
before!"
He was an old soldier, "back to the army again," with Kitchener's men.
He had been in the Chitral campaign and South Africa--"Little wars
compared to this," as he said. A fine, simple man, and although a
bricklayer's laborer in private life, with a knowledge of the right
word. I was struck when he said that the German flares were more
"luminous" than ours. I could hardly see his face in the darkness,
except when he struck a match once, but his figure was black against
the illumined sky, and I watched the motion of his arm as he pointed
to the roads up which his comrades had gone to the support of another
battalion at Hooge, who were hard pressed.
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