“Jack, an’ it’s blarneyin’ ye are,” remarked the Irishman. “Ye needn’t think to find such a spread ivery night, me boy. It’s glad ye’ll be to get your eye-teeth into the hind quarters of the toughest old trek-ox in the span before you’re a week oulder—’dade and it’ll be Hobson’s choice for ye then. Tell ye what, Misther Claverton; that fellow Jack Armitage’s the damnedest old humbug in this camp. Now, what d’ye think he did, when we first came up here?”
“What?” Claverton was bottling up his mirth. He saw at a glance that this droll Irishman and Jack were sworn foes—rival wags, in fact—and was prepared for some fun.
“Why, he had a dirty, batthered ould tin trumpet, that his father used to toot on when he drove the Dublin coach, and it’s no wonder that same shandradan came to mortal smash twice a week wid such a dhriver. Well, this fellow Jack, the first time—and it won’t be the last, I’m thinking—he got his skin too full of Cape smoke, what’s he do but go outside his tent in the middle of the night and blow off a blast on his old post-horn. I give ye me word it was enough to wake the dead; anyhow, it woke the whole camp. Ye needn’t laff, Jack, ye unfalin’ divil, when it’s five innocent men ye blew to death with that trumpet—five—I give ye me word.”
“How was that?” asked Claverton.
“Well, in this way,” went on the other, delighted to find a new listener whom he could regale with Armitage’s delinquencies. “Ye see the fellow kicked up such a shilloo that every one tumbled out like mad, thinkin’ the camp was attacked, and the Fingo levies there, began lettin’ off their guns as hard as they could bang. They knocked over five of their own men and winged a lot besides, and the bullets were flying about all over the place. As soon as they could be prevailed on to cease fire, and the cause of the scare was known, no end of fellows came cruising up this way, wanting to find the chap who’d sounded the alarm, but Jack, the villain, he stowed away the old trumpet and joined in the search louder than any of them, and it hasn’t been seen or heard of since. Anyhow, he killed five innocent men wid his infernal old bray, and about thirteen of ’em—well, I was hard at work for hours next morning dhiggin’ out the bullets their chums had plugged ’em wid, and nately they’d done it, too. One chap had his—”
“Oh, don’t go lugging your old butcher’s shop in here, Dennis,” interrupted Armitage. “Even at your own trade you’re the clumsiest old sawbones that ever hoodwinked the examiners and slipped through.”
“Clumsy, am I? The divil!” cried McShane, who was accompanying the colonial forces in the capacity of surgeon. “Wait till I get me probes into ye, Master Jack Armitage—some of these days when ye get a couple of pot-legs through ye—and we’ll see if it’s clumsy I am.”
“Oh, hang it, Jim, only listen to the fellow. Do put an extinguisher on him. If we must have a butcher, at any rate he might leave the shop outside.”
There was a laugh.
“Wait a bit, Jack, me boy. It’s meself who’ll live to hear ye change your tone, as sure as me name’s Dennis McShane!” cried the other.