“Wal, no, I tink not, sah, if you mean eating der lonshon.”
“The man’s an idiot!” exclaimed the lieutenant angrily.—“How far is the enemy from here?” he demanded, turning to the other spy.
“Tirty mile, I say.—What you tink, ole Moses?” addressing his confederate.
“I tink him twenty-sheven—no, tirty-tree—no, by gum, I can’t count him in dis fashion,” slapping his forehead despairingly with one brown hand.
Mr. Thompson stamped his foot angrily upon the ground.
“These fellows would try the patience of Job,” he said, turning to us. “I wish that polite old Spanish interpreter was to the fore; he might get some sense out of them.”
“It is quite impossible they can have gone twenty or thirty miles and back,” laughed the captain of marines. “Don’t you see the utter absurdity of it all, old man?”
“Of course I do; but you can’t get any sense out of pigheaded numskulls.”
“How you go twenty mile and back, Johnny?” I asked the spies. “You no have time for him by any chance.”
Both men opened wide their mouths as if they were about to swallow a couple of mince-pies at a gulp. This was their mode of laughing decorously.