4th Regiment, mad with rage, foamed out a curse upon the Royals.
Corporal Sam lifted his bleeding fist and struck him across the
mouth. The sergeant dragged the two apart, slipped an arm under his
comrade's, and led him away as one leads a child. A moment later the
surge of the retreating crowd had almost carried them off their feet.
But the sergeant kept a tight hold, and steered his friend back every
yard of the way along the bullet-swept foreshore. They were less
than half-way across when the dawn broke; and looking in his face he
saw that the lad was crying silently--the powder-grime on his cheeks
streaked and channelled with tears.



CHAPTER III.


'I don't understand ye, lad,' said Sergeant Wilkes.

'Fast enough you'd understand, if you'd but look me in the face,'
answered Corporal Sam, digging his heel into the sand.

The two men lay supine on a cushion of coarse grass; the sergeant
smoking and staring up at the sky, the corporal, with his sound hand
clasping his wounded one behind his head, his gaze fixed gloomily
between his knees and across the dunes, on the still unrepaired
breach in San Sebastian.

A whole fortnight had dragged by since the assault: a fortnight of
idleness for the troops, embittered almost intolerably by a sense
that the Fifth Division had disgraced itself. One regiment blamed