The latest flare sank and died, and he scrambled to his feet and blundered to the dark, jagged wall of the ruined farm house. He crouched against it, and tried to control his breathing for this newly conceived terror threatened to smother him. it was the first time it had come upon him.
Fear he had known, had lived with it as his constant companion these last two years, but never this terrible paralysing terror.
When he touched his fingers of his right hand to his ice-cold cheek, he felt the tremble in them, and in sympathy his teeth chattered in a short staccato rhythm. I can't shoot like this, he thought wildly, clenching his jaw until it ached and locking his hands together and holding them hard against his groin, and I can't stay here. The ruin was too obvious a stand to make. It would be the first point the German sniper would study. He had to get out of there, and quickly. Back to the trenches. Suddenly his terror was panic, and he lifted himself to begin the crazed flight back, leaving his rifle propped against the ruined wall. Bist du da? a voice whispered softly near him in the darkness. Mark froze instantly. Ja! The reply was further along the wall and Mark found the rifle with his left hand settling naturally on to the stock and his right curling about the pistol grip, forefinger hooking over the trigger.
Women, wir gehen zurUck. Close beside Mark, sensed rather than seen in the darkness, passed a heavily laden figure. Mark swung the rifle to follow him, his thumb on the safety-catch ready to slip it. The German stumbled heavily in the treacherous snowy footing, and the wiring tools he carried clanked together. The man cursed. Scheisse! Halt den Mund, snapped the other, and they moved on back towards the German line above them on the crest of the hill.
Mark had not expected a wiring detail to be out in this weather. His first thought had been for the German sniper, but now his mind leaped forward at this hidden good fortune.
The patrol would lead him through the German wire, and their heavy blundering tracks would hide his own from the sniper.
It was only when he had decided this that he realized with surprise that his panic had passed, his hands were rock steady and his breathing was deep and slow. He grinned without humour at his own frailty and moved forward lightly after the German patrol.
They were a hundred paces beyond the farm house when it stopped snowing. Mark felt the slide of dismay in his chest. He had relied heavily on the snow holdin& at least until dawn, but he kept on after the patrol. They were moving faster and more confidently as they neared their own lines.
Two hundred yards below the crest Mark left them to go on alone, and began working his way sideways around the slope, groping his way painstakingly through the heavily staked wire, until at last he recognized and reached the stand that he and Fergus had picked out through binoculars the previous afternoon.
The main trunk of one of the oaks that had covered the hill had fallen directly down the slope, pulling up a great matted tangle of roots from the soft high-explosive ploughed earth.
Mark crawled among the tangle of roots; selecting the side which would be in deepest shadow from the winter-angled sun, he wriggled in on his belly until he was half covered by them, but with head and shoulders able to turn to cover the full. curve of the northern slope ahead of him.
Now his first concern was to check the P-14 carefully, paying particular attention to the vulnerable, high- mounted Bisley-type rear sight to make sure that it had not been knocked or misaligned during the journey across noman's-land. He ate two of the ham sandwiches, drank a few rationed mouthfuls of sweet coffee and adjusted the woollen scarf over his mouth and nose, for warmth and to prevent the steaming of his breath. Then he laid his forehead carefully against the wooden butt of his rifle. He had developed the knack of instant sleep, and while he slept it snowed again.
When Mark woke in the sickly grey light of dawn, he was blanketed by the fine white flakes. Careful not to disturb them, he lifted his head slowly, and blinked his eyes rapidly to clear them. His fingers were stiff and cold; he worked them steadily in the gloves, forcing warm blood to flow.
He had been lucky again, twice in one night was too much. First the patrol to lead him through the wire and now this thin white coat of natural camouflage to blend his shape with the tangled roots of the oak. Too much luck, the pendulum must swing.
Slowly the darkness drew back, widening his circle of vision, and as it expanded so the whole of Mark's existence came to centre in those two wide golden brown eyes. They moved quickly in the pattern of search, touching in turn each irregularity and fold, each feature, each object, each ting colour or texture of snow and mud and earth, contras each stump of shattered timber or fallen branch, the irregular rim of every shell hole, looking for shadows where they should not have been, seeking the evidence of disturbance beneath the new thin coat of snow, seeking, searching for life, literally for life.
The snow stopped again a little before nine, and by noon the sky had lightened and there were holes in the cloudcover, a single watery ray of sun fell and moved like a searchlight across the southern slope of the hill. Right, Cuthbert, let's draw some Hun fire. Fergus had marked each of the German sniper's kills on the trench map the Sergeant-Major had loaned him. There were two black spots close to each other in the same section of trench. At those places the parapet was too low for the commanding bulk of the hill that commanded the front line. After five men had been killed at those two spots the parapet had been raised with sand-bags and crudely lettered notices warned the unwary.
KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN. SNIPER AT WORK. The two black spots were only fifty paces apart, and Fergus guessed that the sniper had achieved his successes here by waiting for a victim to pass down the trench. He would get a glimpse of a head in the first gap, and would be aiming into the second gap with his finger on the hairtrigger as the man passed it. He explained this to Sean Courtney as he made his preparations, for by this time Sean was so intrigued by the hunt that only a major German offensive would have lured him back to his headquarters.
During the morning he had spoken to his aide-de-camp over the field telephone, and told them where they could find him in an emergency.
But make sure it's an emergency, he had growled ferociously into the headset. I'll draw him from south to north, Fergus explained, that will force the bloody Hun to turn away from Mark's stand, it will give the lad an extra second while he swings back towards the ridge. Fergus MacDonald was good with the dummy, Sean had to concede it. He carried it two feet higher than natural man height, to compensate for the raised parapet, and he gave it a realistic roll of the shoulders, like a hurrying man as he passed it through the first gap.
Sean, the young Captain and the beeffy red-faced Sergeant-Major were waiting with a half dozen other ranks beyond the second gap, watching Fergus come down the boards towards them steadily.
Instinctively they all drew breath and held it as he came up to the second gap, all of them tensed with suspense.
Up the slope of the hill, the Mauser cracked, like a bullwhip on the icy air, and the dummy kicked sharply in
