“Good God! Claverton, is that you? Now just look at these damned fools. Drop that, will you?” he roared, bestowing a violent kick on one of his men who was blazing away without even bringing his piece to his shoulder. The fellow gave a yell of pain and made off.
At length the confusion began to abate. Seeing no further sign of an attack upon the camp, and their ammunition having decreased alarmingly, the native auxiliaries ceased firing by degrees, each man, as he did so, sneaking off looking very much ashamed of himself.
“Damned fools, in sooth,” assented Claverton, when the uproar had calmed down. “But, Lumley, I wish you’d just turn up that fellow Smith—Vargas Smith. There’s something I want to see him about at once.”
“Certainly. Here, pass the word there for Corporal Smith,” he called out.
“Oh, he’s promoted, then?”
“Well, yes. A sharp fellow, you know; helps me no end.”
But Corporal Smith was not forthcoming. He was nowhere to be found, in fact. He was not on guard, for he had been in the camp not long before the alarm, they said, but now there was no trace of him.
“How long before?”
Well, it might have been half an hour since he was seen, certainly not much more.
“Not less?”