Jack and Will met Sergeant Linham as they were crossing their own lines, and that worthy looked sternly at them.
‘Ha, hum, you toads!’ he said, ‘where have you been? Corporal Napper gave information that you had deserted, and an order for your arrest is out.’
‘And if it isn’t desertion it’s absence without leave,’ said a disagreeable voice; and, turning, the trumpeters saw Corporal Napper regarding them evilly. ‘They’re to be put under arrest, sergeant,’ he said; and in two minutes Jack and Will found themselves prisoners, charged with a grave crime.
CHAPTER XVII.
NAPPER PLAYS HIS LAST CARD.
THE colonel of Jack’s regiment was a very strict disciplinarian, and absence without leave while on active service was an offence that, if proved, would bring very heavy punishment. This fact Jack and Will were quite aware of, and their feelings were very far from cheerful as they discussed the aspect of affairs.
‘It’s all that beast of a Napper’s doings,’ said Jack angrily. ‘I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I shall have to go for him, even at the expense of getting a court-martial. His tyranny is more than I am going to put up with.’
It was, indeed, Napper’s doings, and he had spread a report that both Jack and Will had been heard to say they were sick of soldiering and were going to take the first opportunity to bolt.
It might have gone hard with both of them had it not been for Larry O’Callaghan, whose explanation of his absence had been at once accepted by his trumpet-major. In the afternoon he came over to the lines of the Lancers to see his friends, when to his surprise he heard from Sergeant Linham that they were under arrest.
‘By the howly piper!’ he cried, ‘’tis too bad. But I can upset that baste of a Napper. Shure the man that gave him the shtripes should have put ’em on his back, not on his arm. Now, sargint darlin’, we’ll confound ’em. We’ll find the other bhoys as was with us, and that’ll be enough evidence to upset even the great Dook himself if he was alive.’
He and Sergeant Linham set out for the camp of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. There they soon found the little sergeant, who greeted Larry warmly.