histle and thorn.

I went now downhill into an overgrown water-course (very much like the
one in which I used to sleep and eat away back by the artillery big
gun). Here were willows and brambles with ripe blackberries, and
wild-rose bushes with scarlet hips. "Just like England!" I thought.

And then, as I crossed the little dry-bed stream and came out upon a
sandy spit of rising ground: "Z-z-ipp! Ping!"--just by my left arm.
The bullet struck a ledge of white rock with the now familiar metallic
"tink!"

I went on moving quickly to get behind a thorn-bush--the only cover near
at hand. Here, at any rate, I should be out of sight.

"Ping!"

"Crack--ping!"

I could hear the report of the rifle. I lay flat on my stomach,
grovelled my face into the sandy soil and lay like a snake and as still
as a tortoise.

I waited for about ten minutes. It seemed an hour, at least, to me. The
sniper did not shoot again. In front of my thorn-bush was an open space
of pale yellow grass, with no cover at all. I crawled towards the
left flank and tried to creep slowly away. I moved like the hands of
a clock--so slowly; about an inch at a time, pushing forward like a
reptile on my stomach, propelling myself only by digging my toes into
the earth. My arms I kept stiff by my side, my head well down.

But the sniper away behind that little pear-tree (which stood at the far
end of the open space) had an eagle eye.

"Ping! z-z-pp! ping!"

I lay very still for a long time and then crept slowly back to my
thorn-bush.

I tried the right flank, but with the same effect. And now he began
shooting through my thorn-bush on the chance of hitting me.

Behind me was a dense undergrowth of thorn, wild-rose bramble, thistle,
willow and sage.

I turned about and crawled through this tangle, until at last I came
out, scratched and dishevelled and sweating, into the old water-course.

The firing-line was only a few hundred yards away, and the bullets from
a Turkish maxim went wailing over my head, dropping far over by the
Engineers whom I had passed.

I wanted to find those wounded, and I wanted to get past that open
space, and I wanted above all to dodge that sniper. The old scouting
instincts of the primitive man came calling me to try my skill against
the skill of the Turk. I sat there wiping away blood from the scratches
and sweat from my forehead and trying to think of a way through.

I looked at the mountains on my left--the lower ridge