The Rutlands were worn out with fatigue and hunger. It had been impossible to bring up supplies, and they had only their emergency rations and what food they could find in the village. But in the evening two fresh battalions came up to relieve them, and they were ordered back to their original billets. There the brigadier himself complimented them on their success, and promised them a well-earned rest. When the roll was called, it was found that the success had been won at a heavy cost. Half the officers and thirty per cent. of the men were killed or wounded. Colonel Appleton was slightly injured by a splinter, Lieutenant Kennedy had narrowly escaped death: a bullet had shattered the wire-nippers in his breast pocket, causing lacerations of the flesh. Stoneway’s wound turned out to be very slight; and some of the men who had been with him in the cottage were rather aggrieved that he had withdrawn from the firing line though not incapacitated. Captain Adams, Kenneth and Harry were among those who had come through unscathed. CHAPTER XIV THE HIKIOTOSHI The village appeared to be full of wounded. Some were being attended to by doctors on the spot, others were sent to the rear in motor ambulances as fast as these could be brought up. The Rutlands learnt that their attack on the village had been only one incident in operations that had extended for several miles along the front, and which had resulted in a certain gain of ground. The German trenches had been stormed, and the enemy thrown back for a considerable distance. During the morning a motor despatch rider came in with a message from the general of division. An immediate answer was required, which Colonel Appleton at once proceeded to write, while Captain Adams questioned the cyclist on what he had seen in the course of his ride. The divisional headquarters was at a village some fifteen miles to the north-east as the crow flies, but the route taken by the cyclist, well behind the British lines, was almost twice that distance. He had been instructed to return the same way. It occurred to Captain Adams, however, that much time would be saved if a more direct route were followed, and he suggested that the colonel should take advantage of the change in position resulting from the forward movement and the confusion in the German lines, to send his message along a road that ran from the captured village in the rear of what had been the enemy’s trenches. "That’s all very well," said the colonel, "but in the first place this man is ordered to go back the same way, and in the next we have no other cycles or cyclists." "We have a couple of cycles," said the captain. "Don’t you remember, sir, we sent a requisition to the base for a couple of new machine guns and by some blunder or other they sent us two motor cycles instead?" "And we still have them?"