Upon one leg of Alf's jeans trousers appeared an artistic dab of red.

He had been wounded, and for days the sitting down and the uprising of him would be acts of care.
And where was the South Sea islander?
Almost as he lunged he had leaped backward around the corner of the house and run for the covered ditch.

Once in that covert, he did not "lurk" to any great extent.

He crawled away as rapidly as his hands and knees would carry him, reasoning that the boys would, upon finding no one near the house, run naturally to the wood in search of the enemy.

They never thought of the old ditch, though, later in the day, the thing occurred to them, and an examination of the sandy bottom told the story.