Peter Pegg’s thoughts seemed to animate him, and for a turn or two he changed his pace from a slow march to double.
“Steady, my lad!” he muttered. “There ain’t no hurry;” and he dropped back into the regular pace, and began thinking about the boat and its occupants.
“Nice young lady she is; and I suppose that there Sir Charles is going to make a match with her, for she and Mister Archie always seem just like brother and sister. I suppose he ain’t been well. Been precious quiet lately. Can’t have offended him, for he was as jolly as could be last time I saw him. He’s getting more solid-like and growed up. But my word, what fun we have had together sometimes! And what a row there would have been if we had been found out! It wouldn’t have done. But it has cheered me up many a time when I have had the miserables and felt as if I’d like to cut sojering and make for home. It was nice to have a young officer somewheres about your own age ready for a lark. Poor old Mother Smithers, and that brown juice—what do they call it—cutch and gambia?—as dyes things brown. The officers’ clean shirts as was washed in that water—haw, haw, haw!— What’s that?”
The listener brought his piece to the ready, and the click, click of the lock followed instantly upon a shrill cry which seemed to thrill the sentry along every nerve.
“Is it the crocs?” he thought; and then close upon the distant sound of blows and a splash or two came in Archie’s well-known but now excited tones:
“Sentry Pegg! Help!”
The young private obeyed his first instinct, and that was, instead of firing, to give the alarm, to run down as fast as he could to the water’s edge and plunge in amongst the scattered, overhanging trees, making as well as he could judge for the direction from which the cries had arisen.
“Here! Coming! Coming!” he panted, as he rushed in where the trees were thickest, to become, directly after, conscious of a figure starting up from behind a bush that he had just passed, and from which, glittering and flashing, came the sparkle of quite a little cloud of fire-flies.
The lad swung himself round as he scented danger, and struck back with the butt of his rifle; but it was only to miss his assailant and expose his head to a blow from the other side—so heavy a stroke from a formidable, club-like weapon that he dropped, with a faint groan, while from the direction of the boat right out towards the middle of the river there was a resumption of the plashing of poles.