“Not quite,” I said.
“Then look here. See that round table turned up in the corner?”
“Yes.”
“Suppose, then, two flies started from the edge to get to the opposite edge, and one went round and the other right across straight, which would get there first?”
“Oh, I know that,” said Mercer, rubbing his nose with the back of his glove; “the one that went across the diameter ever so much sooner than the one that went half round the circumference.”
“Yes,” I said; “the chord is shorter than the arc.”
“Never mind about your fine way of putting it,” said Lomax. “I see you understand, and that’s what I mean. The enemy would diameter you while you tried to circumference him.”
The serjeant laughed at his ready adoption of our words, and we laughed too, but he cried “’Tention!” again, and now made us stand face to face on guard, manipulating us and walking round till he had us exactly to his taste, when he suddenly remembered something, and, taking a piece of chalk from his pocket, he drew a line between us, and then raised our hands with their huge gloves to the pitch he considered correct.
“There you are, boys,” he said; “that couldn’t be better. Now, bear in mind what I said; self-defence is the thing you’ve got to aim at, just as a general manages his regiments and fences with them till the proper time comes, and then he lets them go. Now, to begin with, you must be the enemy, Master Mercer, and Master Burr here’s got to thrash you.”
“Oh!” cried Mercer.