long time, and we began to fear he was either shot or taken prisoner
with the others who had gone too far up the Sirt.

One afternoon we were resting among the rocks, waiting for wounded to
be sent back to us; for since the loss of the others we were not
allowed to pass the Brigade Headquarters. There was a lull in the
fighting, with only a few bursting shrapnel now and then.

This particular lance-jack was quite a young lad of the middle-class,
with a fairly good education.

But he was a weedy specimen physically, and I doubted whether he could
pull through if escape should mean a fight with Nature for food and
water and life itself.

Fairly late in the day as we all lay sprawling on the rocks or under
the thorn-bushes, I saw a little party staggering along the defile
which led up to the Sirt at this point.

There were two men with cow-boy hats, and between them they helped
another very thin and very exhausted-looking fellow, who tottered
along holding one arm which had been wounded.

As they came closer I recognised my lost lance-jack, very pale and
shaky, a little thinner than usual, and with a hint of that gleam of
sniper-madness which I have noticed before in the jumpy, unsteady eyes
of hunted men.

The other two, one each side, were sturdy enough. Well-built men, one
short and the other tall, with great rough hands, sunburnt faces, and