‘That’ll convince them if they look in that I’ve gone to bed,’ said he, ‘only it won’t convince them so much if they see me as well. It’s quite certain I must hide until I go away.’
He crept under the map-table, which had a cloth on it nearly coming to the ground, and thought of another thing to make them believe he was unsuspicious and asleep.
‘I’ll snore,’ thought David, remembering how the crow had snored. ‘Haw, caw, haw. Rumph, humph, haw! Haw haw-w-w-w-w. Rumph!’
He had hardly stopped when he heard whispering outside the tent.
‘Yes, I peeped in,’ said one voice, ‘and there he was a-lying in his bed, an’ you don’t need to peep in to know he’s lying there still, sleeping the last sleep he’ll ever sleep on earth.’
‘And the barbed wire’s in place?’ asked another voice.
‘Yes. He couldn’t get through if he was fifty Field-Marshals, and he isn’t one.’
‘Who is he then?’ asked the first voice.
‘Why, he’s that little whipper-snapper as takes us out of our box and puts us back again, without a “with your leave,” or “by your leave,” nor anything. We’ll put him in a box to-morrow, tight screwed down, too.’
‘Just like his impudence to think himself a Field-Marshal,’ said the second. ‘Are we going to hang him first and shoot him next and behead him last, or t’ other way about.’