“What do you mean? Don’t stop to talk, but come on.”
“All right; but just this,” came back in a whisper. “They can’t help themselves, and won’t take any notice whatever we do, unless they think we are going to kill them. Help yourself, comrade, the same as I do.”
Pen hesitated for a moment. Then, as he saw Punch busily taking possession of musket and cartouche-belt, he followed his example.
“It’s for life, perhaps,” he thought.
He had no difficulty in furnishing himself with the required arms from a pile, and that too without any of the wounded seeming to pay the slightest attention.
“Ready?” whispered Punch. “Got a full box?”
“Yes,” was the answer.
“Sling your musket then. Look sharp, for it’s getting light fast.”
Directly after the two lads were crawling onward painfully upon hands and knees, for every yard sent a pang through Pen’s wrists, and he thoroughly appreciated his comrade’s advice, for there were moments when he felt that had he been carrying the musket he would certainly have left it behind.
He did not breathe freely till he had entered the dark patch of woodland, where it was fairly open, and they had pressed on but a short distance in the direction of the mountain, which high up began to look lighter against the sky, when he started violently, for the clear notes of a bugle rang out from somewhere beyond the spot where the wounded lay, to be answered away to left and right over and over again, teaching plainly enough that it was the reveille, and also that they were in close proximity to a very large body of troops.