The man he called
had passed beyond his reach.
* * * * *
Relief came to the beleaguered force at daybreak, and the worst incident
of the campaign ended without disaster. A casualty list, published in
the London papers a few days later, contained an announcement, which
concerned nobody who read it, to the effect that Private Ford, of a West
African Regiment, had succumbed to his wounds.
* * * * *
The Friend Who Stood By
"And you will come back, Jim? Promise! Promise!"
"Of course, darling--of course! There! Don't cry! Can't you see it's a
chance in a thousand? I've never had such a chance before."
The sound of a woman's low sobbing was audible in the silence that
followed; and a man who was leaning on the sea-wall above, started and
peered downwards.
He could dimly discern two figures standing in the shadow of a great
breakwater below him. More than that he could not distinguish, for it
was a dark night; but he knew that the man's arms were about the girl,
and that her face was hidden against him.
Realising himself to be an intruder, he stood up and began to walk away.
He had not gone a dozen yards before the sound of flying feet caught his
attention, and he turned his head. A woman's light figure was running
behind him along the deserted parade.
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