I promptly stopped him.
“Do you mind seeing, like a good fellow, if there’s a bath-sponge lying just over there by that tent?” I said.
“All right, sir, I’ll have a look,” answered the drummer-boy, good-naturedly, and off he went.
In a minute or two he returned with it.
“Here you are, sir. Been playing Aunt Sally with it, I suppose?”
“No, Uncle Triggs,” I said laughingly. “You’ve had an awfully narrow escape, bugler, only you don’t know it. I should strongly advise you not to come near the gunroom tent in the early morning, for Mr. Fitzgerald there always gets a violent attack of homicidal mania about that time.”
An hour later the tents were struck and we had started on our march up country to the tune of “Rule Britannia,” played with tremendous energy by our fife-and-drum band.
Little did I anticipate what was before me—such adventures as even in my wildest dreams had not occurred to my mind.
CHAPTER VII.
NED AND THE MULE-DRIVER.
We had two sets of native auxiliaries. One consisted of a fine lot of Spanish baggage-mules, strong hardy beasts, thoroughly acclimatized, and remarkably sure-footed; and the other a little bevy of guides, interpreters, and spies, without whose aid we could have accomplished little or nothing, for we were entirely ignorant of the country we were about to traverse, and our knowledge of Spanish was confined to about a dozen words or so.