The latter nodded.
For the Police surgeon—Dr Blunt—a tall, pleasant-mannered Irishman—had examined and duly dressed Dick’s wound, informing him that, although not serious, it was not a thing to play the fool with.
“You see, Selmes,” he said, “you are such a rash, impetuous beggar. I suppose if some nigger were to sneak in to-night and tell you he knew where to capture old Kreli, you’d start out on the spot and try and do it. Well, let me remind you there’s such a thing as blood-poisoning. It’s all right now, but if you get acting the ass with this thing, open and running as it’ll be for the next few days, why, there’s no telling. No, my boy. You’ll have to wear your arm in a sling till I tell you to take it out. What then? Why, you’ll only look the more interesting. Anyway, it’s only your left fin.”
This was some consolation. For it enabled Dick to sit down and write a full, true, and particular account of the two battles and their sequel to Hazel Brandon, and, incidentally, to his father, to be sent when the Commandant should elect to send through despatches reporting recent affairs.
“What do you make of this beast, Greenoak?” went on the Commandant, as he extracted the last captured lizard specimen from the lethal pickle-bottle.
“Don’t know. I’m not up in scientific natural history.”
“Well, he’s quite an uncommon variety. Shall have to look him up when I get back to my library.”
Greenoak exchanged a comical look with Dick Selmes. The Commandant, for the moment, attached more importance to the capture of this miserable, uninviting little specimen of the lizard tribe, than he did to the stirring and momentous events of the last couple of days. And yet—were the alarm again to be given, no man in that camp would be more readily on the spot, the very personification of cool and calm collectedness.
There were other humours in the life of the camp which every now and then would come to the fore. One day a trooper, charged with trying to shoot himself with his carbine, was marched before the Commandant. The latter looked at him in a half-abstracted, lack-lustre sort of way, then ordered him extra musketry practice—“for,” he added, with characteristic dryness, “a man who can’t hit himself at no yards isn’t likely to be able to hit an enemy at so many.”
Then Corporal Sandgate returned to the Kangala and reported for duty. His foot was quite healed now, and all he asked for were a few chances of being even with the brutes who had tortured him.