hornton nodded his head at the
crutches with a smile. "It was from a bit of shrapnel just as I made the
trench, and as I fell in I caught at the sand bags and whirled about
facing out over No Man's Land; as I whirled I saw, close by, Beaurame's
face in a shaft of light. I don't know why I made conversation at that
moment--I did. I said:

"When did you get back?"

And his answer came as if clicked on a typewriter. "Me, I stayed, _Mon
Capitaine_. It had an air too dangerous, out there."

I stared in a white rage. You'll imagine--one of my men to dare tell me
that! And at that second, simultaneously, came the flare of a shell star
and a shout of a man struck down, and I knew the voice--John Dudley. He
was out there, the tail end of the party, wounded. I saw him as he
fell, on the farther side of the new trench. Of course, one's instinct
was to dash back and bring him in, and I started. And I found my foot
gone--I couldn't walk. Quicker than I can tell it I turned to Beaurame,
the coward, who'd been afraid to go over the top, and I said in French,
because, though I hadn't time to think it out, I yet realized that it
would get to him faster so--I said:

"Get over there, you deserter. Save the lieutenant--Lieutenant Dudley.
Go."

For one instant I thought it was no good and I was due to have him shot,
if we both lived through the night. And then--I never in my life saw
such a face of abject fear as the one he turned first to me and then
across that horror of No Man's Land. The whites of his eyes showed, it
seemed, an eighth of an inch above the irises; his black eyebrows were
half way up his forehead, and his teeth, luxuriously upholstered with
fillings, shone white and gold in the unearthly light. It was such a mad
terror as I'd never seen before, and never since. And into it I, mad
too with the thought of my sister if I let young John Dudley die before
my eyes--I bombed again the order to go out and bring in Dudley. I
remember the fading and coming expressions on that Frenchman's face like
the changes on a moving picture film. I suppose it was half a minute.
And here was the coward face gazing into mine, transfigured into the
face of a man who cared about another man more than himself--a common
man whose one high quality was love.

"_C'est bien, Mon Capitaine_," Beaurame spoke, through still clicking
teeth, and with his regulation smile of good will he had sprung over the
parapet in one lithe movement, and I saw him