thereafter took a savage delight in reckless exposure whenever it was
possible. And he soon saw that his position was a queer one, and an
unenviable one, as far as a cool test of nerve was the point at issue.
The officers, he saw, had their men to look after--orders to obey--their
minds were occupied. The soldiers were busy getting a shot at the
enemy--their minds, too, were occupied. It was his peculiar province to
stand up and be shot at without the satisfaction of shooting
back--studying his sensations, meanwhile, which were not particularly
pleasant, and studying the grewsome horrors about him. And it struck
him, too, that this was a ghastly business, and an unjustifiable, and
that if it pleased God to see him through he would never go to another
war except as a soldier. One consideration interested him and was
satisfactory. Nobody was shooting at him--nobody was shooting at anybody
in particular. If he were killed, or when anybody was killed, it was
merely accident, and it was thus pleasant to reflect that he was in as
much danger as anybody.

The firing was pretty hot now, and the wounded were too many to be
handled. A hospital man called out sharply:

"Give a hand here." Grafton gave a hand to help a poor fellow back to
the field hospital, in a little hollow, and when he reached the road
again that black horse and his boy rider were coming back like shadows,
through a rain of bullets, along the edge of the woods. Once the horse
plunged sidewise and shook his head angrily--a Mauser had stung him in
the neck--but the lad, pale and his eyes like stars, lifted him in a
flying leap over a barbed-wire fence and swung him into the road again.

"Damn!" said Grafton, simply.