Saul crawled towards him, blood on his face and his eyes fastened on
Sean's face.
'Sean!'
Leave Turn. Leave him But there was hope in that pitiful blood-smeared
face, and the fingers of Saul's hands clawed among the coarse grass
roots as he dragged himself forward.
It was beyond all reason. But Sean went back to him.
Beneath the spurs of his terror Sean found the strength to lift him and
run with him.
Hating him as he had never hated before, Sean blundered towards the
drainage ditch carrying Saul. The acceleration of his brain slowed
down the passage of time so that he seemed to run for ever.
'Damn you!' he mouthed at Saul, hating him.
'Damn you to hell! ' The words came easily from his mouth, an
inarticulate expression of his terror.
Then the ground gave way beneath his feet and he fell. Together they
dropped into the drainage ditch and Sean rolled away from him. He lay
on his stomach and pressed his face into the earth and shook as a man
shakes in high fever.
Slowly he came back from that far place where fear had driven him, and
he lifted his head.
Saul sat against the bank of the ditch. His face was streaked with a
mixture of blood and dirt.
'How are we doing?' Sean croaked and Saul looked at him dully.
It was bright and very hot here in the sun. Sean unscrewed the stopper
of his water-bottle and held it to Saul's lips. Saul swallowed
painfully and water spilled from the corner of his mouth down his chin
and on to his tunic.
Then Sean drank and finished panting with pleasure.
' Let's have a look at your head. ' He lifted Saul's hat from his
head, and the blood that had accumulated around the sweat band poured
in a fresh flood down Saul's neck. Parting the sodden black hair Sean
found the groove in the flesh of his scalp.
'Grazed you,' he grunted and groped for the field dressing in the
pocket of Saul's tunic. While he bound an untidy turban round Saul's
head he noticed that a strange stillness had fallen on the field, a
stillness accentuated rather than broken by the murmur of voices from
the men around him and the occasional report of a rifle from the
heights above.
The battle was over. At least we got across the river, he thought
bitterly. The only problem that now remains is getting back again.
'How's that feel?' He had wet his handkerchief and wiped some of the
blood and dust from Saul's face. 'Thank you, Sean. ' Suddenly Sean
realized that Saul's eyes were full of wan and it embarrassed him.
He looked away from them.
'Thank you for . for coming back to get me.
or get it.'
'll never forget. Never as long as I live.
'You'd have done the same. ' 'No, I don't think so. I wouldn't have
been able to. I was so scared, so afraid, Sean. You'd never know.
