The Hour of the Donkey

contracting himself to move like a worm, backwards down the tunnel in which he was imprisoned.

The worm moved.

An inch. Another inch. Two inches. Each movement —

contraction and scrabbling of the heels, then expansion—was a reflex instinct towards life.

Then the worm stopped moving: it had ceased to be a worm.

It was a worm which had turned.

And, in turning, had turned into a man again.

Harry Bastable was alive again!

The metamorphosis was completed in a fraction of a second.

The worm had simply wanted to get out of its prison; the man immediately wanted much more than that—it wanted to dummy4

get out, but also to escape and be free.

The man understood where he was.

The carrier had fallen on top of him, but because of its configuration, and the slight humps and bumps of the French roadside there had been just exactly enough room for one human body to lie under it at this point without being crushed by it. If that body had fallen an inch or two either way to the side, or forward, it would have been pulped; even if one of its arms or legs had been outflung—that also would have been the end of it.

But it hadn't. It had fallen as neatly and exactly as if it had been laid out in its grave.

So—it was alive and kicking—literally kicking!

And there was more light, too ... Now that the fit of the body into its tunnel wasn't so tight, it could see daylight —Harry Bastable could see daylight down there, beyond his knees.

The light helped him to think. He turned his head sideways and put his ear as close to the ground as he could. And, as that was not close enough for the Red Indian trick to be really effective, he placed his palms flat on the ground and tried to hear them.

If there were any German vehicles still passing, they were far away, and he could hear no actual sounds, of jackboots stamping and scraping on the road, or voices, or even distant gunfire. But it was better to be safe than sorry; they had passed him by so far, and he had been through so much pain dummy4

and terror so far, that a little more time—a little more time for thought—made sense.

He deliberately stilled his feet in death again: one more dead, anonymous Tommy again!

Now he would think —

His head ached, but not very much. And the more he explored the different pieces of his body, the more he was certain that they all worked more or less normally. Even the blood on his lips didn't taste any more—his nose had bled every time he had played rugger for the battalion. At first he had been embarrassed by it, but a chance remark of the COs which he had overheard after one final whistle, when he had come off with his yellow-and-grey striped shirt disgraced with a stream of it, had changed all that:

'I'll say one thing for Bastable—he's got red blood in him, and he doesn't mind shedding it!'

That was two things, not one, he had thought at the time. But the voice had been approving (he had wanted to go off long before the whistle, but had been too scared of the CO to do so!), and thereafter he had spread the Red Badge deliberately over his face—and probably got his acting-captaincy and his company because of that too, by God! Because the CO and Major Tetley-Robinson preferred officers who could bleed to those who could think, that was for certain; Major Audley had his crown because he was too influential to be ignored, dummy4

and Wimpy's third pip had been forced on them because there had been no one else remotely qualified: but Harry Bastable had got his because his nose bled easily.

But where was Wimpy now?

Dead in a ditch, most likely, poor chap! All those brains, all that knowledge of hie, haec, hoc and Caesar's Gallic Wars spilled into the French dust to mingle with the dust of Caesar's Romans and Gauls.

No! That was not what he must think about!

Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord!

But not any more, Lord—Vengeance is Harry's Bastable's now, Lord!

Promotion has been defined as the selection of an individual for a position of greater responsibility for which he has shown himself qualified by reason of experience and knowledge.

Until now, by reason of his birth and status rather than experience and knowledge, Harry Bastable had considered his promotion (at least in the Territorial Army) as a very reasonable and proper recognition of ability. Now, his considered opinion was that he was insufficiently experienced to conduct a party of Boy Scouts across Eastbourne Front or a quiet Sunday morning out of season.

But he possessed one piece of knowledge which now dummy4

promoted him to a position of far greater importance than that conferred on him by birth or status (manager of bloody Bastable's of Eastbourne, and—purely by accident of birth —

deputy managing director of same), or the three acting-pips on his shoulder.

Suddenly—and by accident—he was important for the first time in his life.