“And then you came on?”
“Yes, my son. I came along at a horrible crawl, which was getting slower and slower; for it’s no use to deny it—us big chaps have so much to carry on one pair of legs that we’re downright lazy ones. There I was, getting slower and slower, and smoking my pipe, and in a rare nasty temper, cussing away at that old sledge for being so heavy, and that sleepy that I kept dropping off fast as a top, and waking up again to find myself going on like a bit o’ machinery. ‘This won’t do,’ I says to myself; and I roused up again, knowing that I couldn’t have been asleep long, because my pipe wasn’t out; but all the same I dreamed a lot, all about dragging a truck on a tram-line down in Botallack mine, right away under the sea. Then I’m blessed if I wasn’t asleep again, fast as a top—chap told me once that didn’t mean a spinning top, but a taupe, which he said was French for dormouse. But that don’t matter, do it?”
“No, no,” said Abel impatiently. “Go on.”
“All right, my son. Where had I got to?”
“You were fast asleep again,” said Dallas.
“So it was, my son; and then something woke me, and what do you think it was?”
“You heard the firing?”
“Nay; I must have yawned or sneezed, for I’d dropped my pipe; and I s’pose I’d slept longer that time, and it must have been out, for I couldn’t see a spark in the dark, and although I went down on my hands and knees, and crawled in all directions with my nose close to the ground, I couldn’t smell it.”
“What did you do then?” said Abel.
“Swore, my son, till I was ashamed of myself, and very thankful I was that you gents couldn’t hear me. ‘They’d drop your acquaintance, my son,’ I said to myself, ‘if they heard you.’ Then I got up again, and was feeling for the trace, to start off again, thinking a deal of my poor old pipe, when ‘Hullo!’ I says to myself, ‘firing!’ There it was, plain enough, two shots together, and after a bit two more.