“No, no, no,” whispered Pen.
“Then just you hold your tongue,” said Punch, nestling down close to his comrade’s side, for the rustle and tramp of many feet began to grow nearer again; and as Punch lay upon his back with his eyes turned in the direction of the approaching sound he soon after caught a glimpse or two of sunlight flashed from the barrels of muskets far down the forest aisles, as their bearers seemed to be coming right for where they lay.
“Look here,” said Punch softly, “they look as if they are coming straight here; but there’s a chance for us yet, so let’s take it, and if they don’t find us— Mind, I didn’t want you to be hit; but as you are, and I suppose was to be, I am jolly glad of it, for it gives a fellow a chance. And what’s the good of me talking?” said the boy to himself now. “He’s gone right off, swoonded, as they call it. Poor old chap! It does seem queer. But it might have been worse, as I said before. Wanted me to run away, did you? Likely, wasn’t it? Why, if I had run it would have served me jolly well right if somebody had shot me down again. Not likely, comrade! I mayn’t be a man, but my father was a British soldier, and that’s what’s the matter with me.”
Punch lay talking to himself, but not loudly enough to startle a bird which came flitting from tree to tree in advance of the approaching soldiers, and checked its flight in one of the low branches of a great overhanging chestnut, and then kept on changing its position as it peered down at the two recumbent figures, its movements startling the bugler, who now began in a whisper to address the bird.
“Here,” he said, “what game do you call that? You don’t mean to say you have come here like this to show the Johnny Crapauds where we are, so that they may take us prisoners? No, I thought not. It wouldn’t be fair, and I don’t suppose they have even seen you; but it did look like it. Here they come, though, and in another minute they will see us, and— Oh, poor Gray! It will be bad for him, poor chap; and— No, they don’t. They are wheeling off to the left; but if they look this way they must see us, and if they had been English lads that’s just what they would have done. Why, they couldn’t help seeing us—a set of bat-eyed bull-frogs; that’s what I call them. Yah! Go on home! I don’t think much of you. Now then, they are not coming here, and I don’t care where they go as long as they don’t find us. Now, what’s next to be done? What I want is another goat-herd’s hut, so as I can carry my poor old comrade into shelter. Now, where is it to be found? I don’t know, but it’s got to be done; and ain’t it rum that my poor old mate here should have his dose, and me have to play the nurse twice over!”
Chapter Twenty Two.
“Unlucky Beggars.”
“If one wasn’t in such trouble,” said Punch to himself, as he lay in the growing darkness beneath the great chestnut-tree, “one would have time to think what a beautiful country this is. But of all the unlucky beggars that ever lived, Private Pen Gray and Bugler Bob Punchard is about the two worst. Only think of it: we had just got out of all that trouble with my wound and Gray’s fever, then he gets hit and I got to nurse him all over again. Well, that’s all clear enough.—How are you now, comrade?” he said aloud, as after cautiously gazing round in search of danger, he raised his head and bent over his wounded companion.