“Well, look at me with my responsibility. I never before felt so much like an impudent boy as I have done this last hour, playing surgeon with these wounded men.”
“Not much play in it, Dick, lad,” said Wyatt sadly. “Well, little un, we’re in for it, and we’ve got it to do. I know you’ll stand by me like a man.”
“Yes, like a man,” said Dick, “but only as a boy.”
“Never mind that. Now tell me—poor old Hulton will get better?”
“I think so; but he has a bad wound, and ought to have proper treatment.”
“Don’t worry about that, lad. You will be able to get bits of advice soon from Robson, and put them into practice. Then you’ve got nature to help you, and she’s a grand nurse when her patients are healthy men, so don’t let what you have to do worry you. Things will come right. Now I want to talk. I have seen the Rajah.”
“Ah! what does he say?”
“All cock-a-hoop. Ready to hug me. He says he never saw anything so grand as the way in which we pursued his enemies. It will be a lesson to the Rajah of Singh that he will never forget, he says.”
“But we were beaten.”
“Yes, he owns that; but, as he says justly, his enemies were four times as strong, and though he has lost some of his men, the enemy have done nothing. The city is safe, and strong enough to set Singh at defiance. Horsemen are of no use against stone walls, and there is an abundance of stores and plenty of water, so that he has nothing to fear but treachery.”