“Fighting? I should just think there is! Can’t you hear?”
“I can hear the shouting, but I don’t quite understand yet.”
“Never mind, then. I was afraid you were done for.”
“Done for! What, killed?”
“Something of the kind,” grumbled Punch; “but don’t bother about it now.”
“I must,” said Pen, with what was passing around seeming to lighten up. “Here, tell me, are my arms fastened behind me?”
“Yes, and mine too. But I just wriggled one hand out so as to feel for you. We are prisoners, lad, and the Frenchies have chivied right back to where the King and his men have been making a bit of a stand. I can’t tell you all azackly, but that’s something like it, and I think they are fighting now—bad luck to them, as O’Grady would say!—right in yonder where we had our braxfas’. I say, it’s better than I thought, comrade.”
“In what way, Punch?”
“Why, I had made up my mind, though I didn’t like to tell you, that they’d give us both the bay’net. But they haven’t. Perhaps, though, they are keeping us to shoot through the head because they caught us along with the smugglers. That’s what they always do with them.”
“Well,”—began Pen drearily.