“Oh no, that’s quite near enough.”
“Will we fire a few shots at the French?” continued Punch eagerly. “I should just think we will! Father always said to me, ‘Pay your debts, my boy, as long as the money lasts;’ and though it ain’t silver and copper here, it’s cartridges and— There! Ain’t it rum, comrade? Now, I wonder whether you feel the same. The very thought of paying has made the pain in my back come again. I say, how’s your leg?”
Chapter Thirty Two.
A cavernous Breakfast.
“I say, comrade,” whispered Punch; “are we going to begin soon?”
The boys were seated upon a huge block of stone watching the coming and going of the contrabandistas, several of whom formed a group in a nook of the natural amphitheatre-like chasm in which they had made their halt.
This seemed to be the entrance to a gully, down which, as they waited, the lads had seen the smuggler-leader pass to and fro several times over, and as far as they could make out away to their left lay the track by which they had approached during the night; but they could not be sure.
That which had led them to this idea was the fact that it seemed as if sentries had been stationed somewhere down there, one of whom had come hurriedly into the amphitheatre as if in search of his chief.