THE WOUNDED CAPTAIN
Safe, but only for the moment. The searchlight had been following them,
and now it played on them and the Servians, a little party of five or
six men, who had dragged them thus to safety.
"Look out! Scatter!" cried one of these, the only one who was in
uniform. "They'll try another shell, just to get even, now that you've
got away from them."
They scattered at once, flinging themselves to the ground after running
a few paces. And, sure enough, a shell struck close to the brink of the
water, half burying itself in the sand before it exploded and sent sand
and dirt flying all over them. The fire of the riflemen carried across
the river, too, from the other bank, but the bullets had little force
left after carrying so far.
Dick, lying face down, his back to the river, and within a few paces of
Steve, lifted his head a little, and looked about him. He saw that a
little way back from the water's edge the ground began to rise quite
sharply, culminating in what was almost a bluff, but was still easily to
be climbed. And where the ground began to rise, there was a sturdy
growth of bushes and young trees, too, that would afford good shelter.
If they could only get so far! It was easy to see. The searchlight from
the monitor was playing all over and around them, making the scene weird
in the extreme but serving them, in a way, by making their path as clear
as it would have been in broad daylight.
Then the searchlight winked out and swung away for a moment. In that
instant the man who had given the first order rose and began running
toward the shrubbery.
"Come on!" he cried, turning and stopping, while he waved his hands.
"The light will be back in a moment!"
They obeyed willingly, and swept up the slope in a wild rush. The
searchlight swung back again, and now a shell burst high in the air
above them. In a moment there was a curious tearing sound, and then a
pitapat on the ground about them. Dick guessed it was shrapnel, though
he had, of course, never been under shrapnel fire before. That was not
from the monitor, he knew. It meant that the Austrians on the other side
must have got a light field piece into action after some delay.
But he was not hit, and in a minute he was at the top of the rise,
panting. Steve Dushan came up to him.
"All right, Dick?" he cried. "I didn't have any idea of bringing you
into anything as hot as this. You might better have stayed and taken
your chance in Semlin! Perhaps your consul could have helped you."
"I don't care! We're all right now," said Dick. He laughed nervously.
"I'm not sorry a bit!" he declared. "It's the most exciting thing that
ever happened to me! Now that it's all over I--yes, I believe I have
enjoyed it!"
"So have I! I mean it, too, Dick! I'm not saying that just to make
myself think I'm brave, because I was awfully frightened all the time.
But now that it's over, it's something to look back at, isn't it? It
isn't everyone who's under fire, after all."
Then they heard Mischa calling.
"Captain!" he cried. "Captain Obrenovitch!"
There was no answer. And suddenly Dick knew that there would be none.
His mind recalled something that he had only half grasped as he ran up
the hill, with the patter of the bursting shrapnel, with its load of
slugs and bullets, nails and pieces of iron, all about him. He had seen
a man stumble, the one man in uniform.
"Is Captain Obrenovitch the one who was in uniform?" he asked.
"Yes, Dick. Why? Was he hit? Did you see him go down?"
"I'm afraid so, yes. Here, I'm going to find out!"
Before Steve realized what he was doing, Dick had turned and plunged
back in the direction from which he had just come.
"Dick!" cried Stepan. "Where are you going? What are you doing?"
"I'm going after him!" Dick shouted back.
"Wait! That's madness! Let me go with you!"
But if he heard, Dick made no answer. He did hear, but he paid no
attention, and scarcely understood the words. All that Dick knew was
that he had run away from a man who had been wounded because he had
braved death to save his, Dick's, life. He had seen him fall, as he
understood now, and he had not stopped to see if he could help! Dick
felt a surge of shame. He felt as if he could never respect himself
again unless he tried to make atonement now for having run on! It was
fantastic, quixotic, absurd perhaps, but it was Dick Warner's way, as
anyone who had known him at home in New York would have realized at
once!
"I saw him fall. I know just where he is," Dick told himself again and
again, as he ran on, stumbling over roots, tripping repeatedly in his
hasty descent of the slope that had seemed so hard to climb a few
moments before. "It's up to me to find him and make up to him for
sticking to that rope!"
That was Dick's thought. He owed his life to this man Obrenovitch, whose
very face he would not know if he saw him now. And that life, he felt,
would be of no use to him if he kept it at the expense of leaving his
debt of gratitude to Obrenovitch unpaid.
The Servian captain had fallen out in the open, and Dick came to him at
last. The searchlight was still playing. It lit up the body for a
moment, and then winked away again. But Dick had his own pocket
flashlight out in a second, and in its light he saw that the captain, if
he was not dead, was in a bad way. Like all scouts, Dick knew something
of the first aid, and a very hasty glance showed him just what had
happened. Obrenovitch lay straight out, and the blood was gushing out
from his leg above the knee. One of the great arteries had been cut. In
a few minutes he would bleed to death if help did not come to him.
"Oh, I hope I'm in time!" cried Dick.
And then he wasted no more of the precious seconds. He knew that
Obrenovitch, as an officer, in uniform, and in time of war, would have
somewhere about him a Red Cross packet containing the absolute
essentials of first aid treatment. In a moment he had found this packet
and torn it open. He was close to the river, and in a twinkling he found
two small, flat stones. These he pressed into the open wounds where the
bullet had passed in and out, and then he drew a tight bandage about
them.
All this time, be it remembered, he was under heavy fire. Bullets
pattered about him constantly. Once a stick he was using in an effort to
improvise a still better tourniquet was shot right out of his hand. But
he never faltered. Fortunately the shooting was wild. The searchlight
had not picked him up, and so he was not a real target for the enemy, as
he might have been had they seen him in the glare of the great light.
The blood soon ceased to flow, and then Dick leaned over to listen for
the beating of the captain's heart. He caught it in a moment. It was
faint, but regular enough.
"I think he'll do all right now," said Dick to himself, with intense
satisfaction.
And then he had time to think of himself, and to realize that he was
tired and shaky about the knees. He collapsed for a moment, and lay
beside the wounded and unconscious officer. But he realized something
that was like a tonic; he had not been afraid, not once, while his work
remained unfinished! Perhaps it was just because he had been too busy in
his fight with the death that was reaching out to seize the Servian.
Whatever the reason, it was something to make him proud and happy, and
to fill him with a tingling sensation that was worth a night's sleep,
almost, in making him forget his own exhaustion.
"Now to get him away!" said Dick to himself. "There's no use in staying
here. Something is sure to hit one or both of us if I do."
But Obrenovitch was rather a heavy man. Dick could have dragged him
along, but he was afraid that that would start the bleeding of the wound
afresh, and he knew that if the Servian lost even a little more of the
blood that he had already shed so freely nothing could save him.
For a moment Dick was near to despair. There seemed nothing to do but
stay there and hope that the Austrian fire would slacken. Even so,
however, things were bad enough, for it was highly important, as Dick
understood very well, to get the Servian officer into a doctor's hands
as soon as possible. His improvised bandage and tourniquet would do very
well for an hour or so, but better treatment was necessary, since it was
dangerous to arrest the circulation of the blood, what there was left of
it, too long. And then Dick heard footsteps, the most welcome sound he
had ever heard, he thought--except for the hail that followed a moment
later.
"Dick! Where are you?"
It was Stepan Dushan. He had come after Dick, determined not to let a
stranger outdo him in courage!
"Here!" cried Dick. "I found him! I believe he'll pull through, if we
can get him away. I've been puzzling my brains trying to think how to do
it. But now we can make a stretcher."
"How? We haven't any material, Dick!"
"Haven't they taught you that?" said Dick. "All our scouts know how to
turn that trick! Stay here! I'll be back in a minute."
Dick always carried his big knife, which had been a present from his
scoutmaster as a reward for a particularly good piece of work that Dick
had once done at home. Now, with its biggest blade, he managed to cut
away two stout branches of a tree, and to strip them of leaves and
twigs. Though they were thin, he knew that the live, green wood was
stout, and that while it might bend and give, it would not readily
break. He returned with the two poles, and called to Steve.
"Take off your coat and give it to me, Steve," he directed.
Steve obeyed, and Dick laid the coat, and his own, which he now took
off, on the ground. Then he passed the poles through the sleeves of the
two coats, having laid them end to end, and then he proceeded to button
both coats.
"Now do you see?" he said. "Isn't that a fine stretcher for a home-made
one? Take his feet now, and lift him very carefully. He's too tall, but
if we pass our hands and arms under him, we can support his head and his
feet when we start to carry him. It'll be a hard job, but it's the only
chance. It's better to let him take the risk of being carried that way
than to leave him here. He hasn't any chance at all here, and he will
have some this way. How soon can we get him to a doctor?"
"Very soon, once we're up the hill," said Steve. "The men can help
there. They didn't know I had come back, but they will soon miss us and
come back to see what has happened. Mischa has been my father's servant
for years, and he would go through fire and water for me, I know."
"Good! Steve, have you noticed? They've stopped firing!"
"About time, too! What a lot of ammunition they have wasted! Well, they
have plenty! We haven't, and when we shoot it will be when we're pretty
sure that there are Austrians in the way!"
"Yes. Steady, now--careful! Don't jolt him even a little--it won't take
much to start that bleeding up again."
Tenderly, carefully, they lifted the wounded man and got him on the
stretcher. Then with the utmost care, lest they disturb the rough
bandaging, they raised it. And when they had it up and were about to
start, in broken step, to make the movement smoother, there came a
fearful test of their nerve. A dull roar sounded behind them, and above
their heads a whistling, shrieking sound, that they had learned to know
well that night! It was the hiss of a shell, and in a moment it burst.
But it had overshot the mark, and when it burst, though their hands
shook, they held their firm grip on the stretcher, and that last,
wanton shot had no more effect than its predecessors. It was the last.
They finished the ascent safely. And there they found Mischa and the
rest, who relieved them and carried the stretcher to the road a few
hundred yards beyond, where, by great good luck, they met a marching
regiment, with a real surgeon.
Their work for Obrenovitch was done.