“You heard what was said, Joe. What do you mean by shaking your head like that?”
“Oh, I’m not the right man,” he said. “I can carry my rifle, but I’m an out-and-out bad one at carrying sacks.”
“Nonsense, Joe,” said his wife. “You can do anything that a British soldier can.”
“Nay, missus,” said Smithers; “’tain’t in my way at all. If it was my officers wanted a stone jar of rack or a dozen of bottled ale, I might manage ’em, but I’m nowhere with sacks.”
“Never mind, then,” said Mrs Smithers tartly; “I’ll go myself.”
“Nay, you won’t,” said Joe, shaking his head more hard than ever.—“I’ll go, gen’lemen. She wants to be a widow, but I look to you, Doctor, not to let her be if I come to quarters with a sack of meal pinned on to my back with a spear.”
That night Joe Smithers managed to crawl right round the outskirts of the settlement, got into the store from the other side, and returned by the same circuitous way with a sack of meal and such instructions to his messmates that two more men started at once and foraged with a like success. But that was only a temporary alleviation of the troubles of the beleaguered, and twice over, when off duty, Archie summoned Peter to accompany him to the lower part of the river, where they succeeded, at great risk, in wading off to a boat, fishing for three parts of the night, and returning after very fair success.
Then came a day when the enemy had been more energetic than ever, and three more of the Major’s little force were carried into hospital suffering badly from spear-wounds, and this just at a time when, in a whisper, the announcement had gone round that there were very few cartridges left.
The Doctor had just finished tending his men with the help of Mrs Morley, for Joe Smithers’s wife had broken down from being brought face to face with her well-scolded husband, who was carried in by two comrades and laid at her feet.
“Oh Joe,” she cried, “how could you?”