The speaker took a squint himself as he spoke, and drew back, baffled beyond the power of speech. While he was struggling with his baffledness the British Colonel had his squint. He also drew back, and said a word that he must have known was not right—at least when he was a boy.
‘I don’t care,’ said Oswald, ‘they were there this morning. White tents like mushrooms, and an enemy cleaning a cauldron.’
‘With sand,’ said Dicky.
‘That’s most convincing,’ said the Colonel, and I did not like the way he said it.
‘I say,’ Oswald said, ‘let’s get to the top corner of the ambush—the wood, I mean. You can see the crossroads from there.’
We did, and quickly, for the crackling of branches no longer dismayed our almost despairing spirits.
We came to the edge of the wood, and Oswald’s patriotic heart really did give a jump, and he cried, ‘There they are, on the Dover Road.’
Our miscellaneous signboard had done its work.
‘By Jove, young un, you’re right! And in quarter column, too! We’ve got em on toast—on toast—egad!’ I never heard anyone not in a book say ‘egad’ before, so I saw something really out of the way was indeed up.
The Colonel was a man of prompt and decisive action. He sent the orderly to tell the Major to advance two companies on the left flank and take cover. Then we led him back through the wood the nearest way, because he said he must rejoin the main body at once. We found the main body very friendly with Noel and H. O. and the others, and Alice was talking to the Cocked-Hatted One as if she had known him all her life.