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Bring the poor beggar down much better if one of us can hold him while the other drives the camel. It's no Grand Trunk Road, by Jove." "Right-O," acquiesced Captain Digby-Soames. "If I can get a clear bearing to a point immediately below where you hover, I'll lie flat on the ground as an affirmative signal. If there's no good landmark I'll stay perpendicular, what?"
To and fro, in and out of the gully, winding, zig-zagging, often travelling a hundred yards to make a dozen, the sure-footed and well-trained beast made its way upward. "Coming down will be joy," observed the Colonel. "I'd sooner be on a broken aeroplane in a cyclone." "Better hop off here, I should think," said Captain Digby-Soames anon. "We can lead him a good way yet, though.
Stopping the engine Colonel Decies climbed out and swung himself into the rear seat of the camel saddle. Captain Digby-Soames sprang into the front one and the camel lurched to its feet, and was driven to the mouth of the gully which the Captain had noted as running up to the scene of the tragedy.
Turning his head, he shouted to Surgeon-Captain Digby-Soames, R.A.M.C., his passenger and pupil: "Vultures on the left-front or starboard bow. 'Invariable battle-field sign of wounded man. Call up stretcher-party by signal Vide page 100 of Decies' great work, what?" "By Jove, it is a wounded man," replied Captain Digby-Soames, who was using field-glasses. "Damned if it isn't a Sahib, too!
"He opened his eyes," said Captain Digby-Soames, "but I doubt if he's conscious. He must have come a frightful cropper. You can see there's a compound fracture of the right femur from here, and one of his feet is fairly pointing backwards. Blood from the mouth, too. Anyhow he's alive. Better shoot him if we can't shift him " "We'll get him all right.
A really first-class problem for solution we're in luck," mused Colonel Decies, making his rapid and skilful examination. "Yes, we must get him down, of course after a bit of splinting." "And then the real 'problem' will commence, I suppose," observed Captain Digby-Soames.
"Have to get the beast kneeling when we climb down to him with the casualty," opined the Colonel. "Better get him down here, I think. Doesn't seem any decent place farther on," and the camel was brought to an anchor and left to his own devices. "By Jove, the poor beggar has come a purler," said Captain Digby-Soames, as the two bent over the apparently unconscious man.
Out shikarring and sprained his ankle, I suppose. Dead, I'm afraid. Poor devil!" "Vultures aren't at work, anyhow," commented Colonel Decies. "Can't land anywhere hereabouts, and I'm afraid 'calling up the stretcher party' isn't in the game here." "Nothing nearer than Kot Ghazi and that's a good thirty miles," replied Captain Digby-Soames as the aeroplane hovered and slowly sank.
"Pity we haven't a few planks," observed Captain Digby-Soames. "We could make one big splint of his whole body and sling him, planks and all, underneath the aeroplane." We've two pairs of putties you can bandage with, and there are puggries on all three topis. Probably his gun's somewhere about, for another leg-splint, too.
"Let's see all we can and then find the nearest landing-place. Search all round for any sign of a tent or encampment. There may be a dak-bungalow somewhere down in the plains, too. The river-bed down on the right there, marks the border." Captain Digby-Soames "scoured" earnestly with his glasses. "Camel on the port-bow, at the foot of the hills," he announced.
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