“Oh, that’s right, sir! Poor fellow, and we are all very sorry for him and much obliged because he was kind enough to come and blow all our cartridges to Jericho, or elsewhere, as they say on the soldiers’ letters. You stop here a little while, sir, and you will hear him begin to jabber. Talk about that mahout’s pa-ta-ta-ma-ta-ja-ja-ja—this chap goes twice as fast.”
“Well, Pete, I can’t stop talking to you. I only wanted to take you in my round. Are you all right?”
“Right as a trivet, sir; only I am getting awful short of ammunition. I don’t want to keep on potting these ’ere fellows, but somehow I took to rifle-shooting. There’s some fun in hitting a mark at a distance, and that’s the only thing I ever got a kind word for from old Tipsy. He said I could shoot.”
“Yes, you are a very good marksman, Pete; and that’s why you are stationed here.”
“Yes, I suppose so, sir. But ’tain’t my fault that I’m a good marksman, as you call it. It come quite easy like. I suppose it’s good for us, but it’s very bad for these ’ere Malay chaps, and it does make me feel a bit squirmy when one of them gives me a chance, and then it’s oracle, phit, and down he goes, and me loading again. I don’t want to shoot them. But then if I don’t keep on knocking them over they’ll knock us over, and I’ve got such a kind of liking for PP that I’d sooner shoot one of them than that they should shoot me. Still, there is something a bit queer about it.”
“You are doing your duty, Pete, fighting for your country.”
“I say, sir, that ain’t quite right, is it? Seems to me that I’m fighting for these ’ere people’s country.”
“We needn’t go into that, Pete. You are doing your duty—fighting for your comrades in defence of this station and the women and children.”
“There he goes again, sir. Just you listen. It makes me wish I could understand what he’s saying.”
Archie turned sharply, for from the part of the room where the Frenchman was lying upon one of the mats Mrs Smithers had placed for him, with another rolled-up to form his pillow, came the quick, excited utterance of the terribly injured man.