Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 31, 2025
The defences of Erzerum were crumbling like sand-castles, and it was a proof of the tenseness of my nerves that I seemed to be deaf to the sound. Stumm had seen us cross the parapet, and he started to sprinkle all the surroundings of the castrol. Blenkiron and I lay like a working-party between the lines caught by machine-guns, taking a pull on ourselves as best we could.
I'm going to ride knee by knee with your sportsmen for the city. Peter spoke a word, and two of the Cossacks dismounted. The next I knew I was mixed up in the cloud of greycoats, galloping down the road up which the morning before we had strained to the castrol. That was the great hour of my life, and to live through it was worth a dozen years of slavery.
Sandy stood rigid, his face very grave and set. She held out both hands to him, speaking softly in Turkish. I noticed that the six Companions had disappeared from the castrol and were somewhere out of sight on the farther side.
And then, as I looked southward, I saw what I had been watching for for days. A little hill split the valley, and on its top was a kranz of rocks. It was the castrol of my persistent dream. On that I promptly took charge. 'There's our fort, I cried. 'If we once get there we can hold it for a week. Sit down and ride for it.
They were shooting at him, but he heeded them not. For the space of a minute he was out of sight, and his whereabouts was shown only by the patter of bullets. Then he came back walking quite slowly up the last slope, and he was carrying something in his arms. The enemy fired no more; they realized what had happened. He laid his burden down gently in a corner of the castrol.
We were in the castrol again, sitting under the parapets. The same thoughts must have been in Sandy's mind, for he suddenly laughed. 'It's a queer ending, Dick. We simply vanish into the infinite. If the Russians get through they will never recognize what is left of us among so much of the wreckage of battle.
He blew the dust away from his cards very gingerly and went on playing. 'Sister Anne, he asked, 'do you see anybody coming? Then came a dud which dropped neatly inside on the soft ground. I was determined to break for the open and chance the rifle fire, for if Stumm went on shooting the castrol was certain death.
The night was pitch dark, but ahead of me in the throat of the pass there was one patch of light, and it showed a rum little hill with a rocky top: what we call in South Africa a castrol or saucepan. I had a notion that if I could get to that castrol I should be safe, and I panted through the drifts towards it with the avenger of blood at my heels.
Then I took a hand with the others in getting up earthworks to complete the circuit of the defence. It was no easy job, for we wrought only with our knives and had to dig deep down below the snowy gravel. As we worked I took stock of our refuge. The castrol was a rough circle about ten yards in diameter, its interior filled with boulders and loose stones, and its parapet about four feet high.
It was hottish work, and the bullets were pretty thick about us, but we all got safely to the kranz, and a short scramble took us over the edge. I laid Blenkiron inside the castrol and started to prepare our defence. We had little time to do it. Out of the thin fog figures were coming, crouching in cover. The place we were in was a natural redoubt, except that there were no loopholes or sandbags.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking