right. Get
along with it. The stretcher bearers will be up presently. Are my mates
dead?"

"Yes," said Dennis--it was no good mincing matters--"but I can't leave
you like this."

"Don't be an ass," said Delavoy-Bagotte. "You can do no good by staying,
and you will only worry me. Look to the gun, I tell you. Your company
would never have crossed that stream behind yonder if I hadn't got on to
the beggars' flank with it."

"That's a fact, old man," assented Dennis. "And it won't be forgotten
when Bob makes his report." And while he was speaking he picked up that
most marvellous of modern weapons, the Lewis gun, and found it unharmed.

"She's all right," he said. "Do you really mean me to go on?"

"Yes, confound you! I shall have to howl in another minute, and I want
to do it alone," said the plucky boy between his teeth.

He was suffering untold agonies and they knew it; but they knew also
that he was right; and Dennis made a sign to Hawke and Tiddler, who
saluted the young lieutenant as they left him.

Keeping just within the fringe of the wood, Dennis shouldering the gun,
while Hawke and Tiddler carried the field mount and the spare magazines,
the adventurous three soon reached the angle in front of the ridge.

The stump of a well-grown beech stood up there, towering above the
ground twenty feet or more. Its crest had been carried away by a shell,
but one stout branch jutted out like the arm of a gallows; and Harry
Hawke had a brain wave.

"'Arf a mo, sir," he said, laying his wallet down. And the next moment
he was clambering up the tree until he reached the bough, where he
supported himself for a minute or two on his elbows, taking stock of the
enemy.

When he came sliding down again his eyes were dancing, and his voice was
husky.

"If we could only get the gun up there, sir," he whispered excitedly,
"the rest's as easy as kiss your hand. You can see the trench and the
head of the bloke what's working that tac-tac of theirs. Have a look for
yourself, sir." And Dennis made the climb, finding it as Hawke had said.

He saw something else, too--C Company now creeping through the wood, and
taking possession of the cover along its northern edge, which told him
that the battalion had arrived.

When he descended, after a careful reconnaissance, he found that Hawke
and Tiddler had already anticipated his decision, and were buckling
their straps together.

"Ain't it a little bit of all right?" grinned Hawke. "