“So would you be if you lost yourself in that dismal hole.”
“True, oh king! I should sit down in a fit of the horrors, and howl for my mother till I cried myself to sleep.”
“No, you wouldn’t, Bob. But old Roby does make me set up my bristles sometimes. I don’t know what’s come to him lately.”
“I know what I should like to see come to him.”
“What?”
“A good licking.”
“Yes, to be followed by court-martial.”
“Not if a Boer did it,” said Dickenson, chuckling.
“What are you laughing at?”
“Thoughts, dear boy. Only thinking of what a lark it would be if he began bullying one of our prisoners—say Blackbeard—and the savage old Boer slipped into him with his fists. I shouldn’t hurry to help him more than I could help.”